


Conversations after Midnight

by Raina_at



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Eurus who?, Friends to Lovers, Grief, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of TLD, Idiots in Love, Implied Drug Use, Light Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, Podfic Available, Pre and Post Reichenbach, S1 to S4, Unhappy marriage, brief parentlock, canon compliant up to TST, s4 fix it sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 26,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27856601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raina_at/pseuds/Raina_at
Summary: A series of conversations after midnight, stretching from Season 1 to after Season 4.Nine years of good nights and bad nights, nine years of talking about many things and leaving even more unspoken.
Relationships: Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 52
Kudos: 99





	1. Chlorine

**Author's Note:**

> This story is completely written, I'm posting the chapters as they come out of beta. The scenes all connect into an overarching story, and are in chronological order. Also, my canon ends with The Six Thatchers, so this goes AU after that.  
> Thank you to my wife Leandra, and thank you so much hotshoeagain for the beta!

The all-night cafe is lit by ancient neon lights that wash the colour out of everything. Not that the decor could be helped by better lighting. Beige walls, small, cracked, ugly formica tables, plastic chairs. It’s a depressing place, neon sign in the window flickering on and off.

The waitress fits the place perfectly, colourless, faded, tired, sad. John orders chips and a pot of tea. Sherlock just waves her off. John tells her to bring a second cup anyway.

The place smells of ancient cigarette smoke and grease, but Sherlock can still smell the chlorine, underneath it all. It’s sharp and clean and surely by this point utterly imaginary. 

He can still taste the bitter adrenaline in his mouth. It’s been two hours, and there’s still a slight tremor running along his skin, down his back, into his hands, conducting into the ground by the jiggling of his leg he can’t seem to stop. His hands are freezing. Maybe the tea is a good idea after all. 

John’s fallen silent again. They’ve been walking aimlessly through London’s deserted streets, wind biting at their hands and ears, trying to get back to some semblance of normalcy. Finally, John said, “I’m starving,” and turned into this place. 

Sherlock followed. 

Now they’re sitting here, silently, until the waitress brings the tea and the chips. Sherlock pours for both of them, adds milk and sugar to his cup, stirs. 

He has no idea what to say. John apparently doesn’t, either, and he’s not the type to talk just for the sake of it. It’s one of the things Sherlock appreciates most about him. He despises the meaningless chatter people fill the air with to prevent socially awkward situations. 

Not that the silence is awkward, precisely. But it does feel heavy. Like words need to be said that Sherlock doesn’t necessarily have. John’s watching him in between shoving chips into his mouth, an adrenaline reaction, no doubt, the body asserting its aliveness by demanding sustenance. He remembers that dinner after John shot the cabbie, how they couldn’t stop grinning at each other, how John shovelled down fried noodles like he’d never see food again, and huffs a little soundless laugh at the memory.

“What’s funny?” John asks, and his voice is loud after such a long silence, but there’s nothing accusing in his tone, or in the look on his face, he just sounds idly curious, and he looks utterly calm.

“I was just thinking that adrenaline makes you hungry,” Sherlock says, grateful for the opportunity to start talking again, about anything other than what’s on his mind, which is, _What is this thing in my chest that hurts every time I look at you?_

John snorts. “Well, we can’t all live on nicotine patches and air. And don’t pretend that you’re not going to start stealing my chips any second now.”

Sherlock smiles, and wonders again that John Watson is sitting here, eating chips, like this is any other night, like nothing whatsoever happened, like they didn’t just live through what felt like a seismic event on par with a solid six on the Richter scale.

John looks at him thoughtfully, and Sherlock’s smile fades. He puts a chip in his mouth and chews slowly, all the while watching Sherlock with that appraising look. 

Finally, he swallows and washes the cip down with the truly awful hot, caffeinated beverage they have the nerve to call tea. He sets the cup down and says, quietly, “Can I ask you something?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes reflexively, hoping it hides the tremor that goes through him at the tone of John’s voice, low and serious. He isn’t nervous, why should he be? They survived; surely whatever follows now can’t be worse than what they just went through, but somehow getting almost blown up and shot isn’t nearly as frightening as knowing this night might have ruined whatever it is that’s between them. It didn’t feel like it at the pool; if anything he felt more in tune with John, closer to him than ever before, but that was then and this is now.  
“You realise that asking me whether you can ask me something is somewhat redundant, right?” He tries for condescending. He’s not sure he succeeds.

John smirks at him humorlessly, and says, still in the same quiet tone, “Not two hours ago you peeled about a kilo of Semtex off me, so you’ll forgive me for not wanting to play semantics games right now.”

Abashed, Sherlock gives a short nod. “Ask then.”

John rubs a hand over his face, and suddenly he looks so very tired, like it’s two in the morning after days of little sleep, which of course it is. “What…” he stops himself, and tries again, “What did you think was going to happen tonight, when you went to meet him?”

Sherlock sighs. Trust John to cut through the bullshit and ask the one question Sherlock can’t actually answer. He takes a sip of his revolting tea and thinks of how to put this in words. The truth is that he had no idea what was going to happen, and that the not knowing was so very thrilling, so very much the opposite of being bored, that he let himself get carried away with the rush. But he can’t say that to John. So he tries to find other words that are equally true. “I wanted to see who he was, draw him out of the shadows, and then find a way to beat him.”

“Like the cabbie?” John asks, and Sherlock nods, reluctantly conceding John’s point, because that wasn't the best decision he ever made either. 

“So we're back to you risking your life to prove you're cleverer than the most recent psychopath?” John asks sharply. 

“What do you want me to say, John?” Sherlock bites back. “It's not like you didn't know what I’m like. You knew from that first night.”

John sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “I’d just hoped you'd learned to trust me enough to take me with you.”

Sherlock looks down at his tea, avoiding looking at John so he doesn't have to see the hurt on his face that’s so clearly in his voice. “I do trust you, “ he says quietly. “More than anyone. I trust you to keep me from making bad decisions. I knew you would have talked me out of it, and I needed to know, I needed to see.” He pauses, then adds, “At least I took a gun this time.”

John smiles a little, then cocks his head and looks at him searchingly, apparently trying to figure out if Sherlock is telling the truth. He takes a deep breath and says, slowly, obviously picking his words very carefully, “The last few days, I sometimes had the feeling that you were… enjoying yourself, for lack of a better word.”

Sherlock nods. That’s fair enough. “I spend so much of my life bored out of my skull, my mind racing and turning on itself if it isn’t constantly engaged. Moriarty wasn’t boring. Not once.”

“Did you enjoy yourself tonight?” John asks, gently, but firmly.

Sherlock shudders imperceptibly. How can John even ask that, when Moriarty all but unzipped Sherlock’s chest and said _Look at Sherlock Holmes’ beating heart, look how it quivers. Look how human he is after all._

“No,” Sherlock says, quietly but with conviction. “Not even a little bit.”

John nods, apparently satisfied. “Good.” 

But Sherlock shakes his head, because there’s something else he needs to say. “I didn’t think he’d escalate like this. I underestimated him. I didn’t realise just how unhinged he really is. That’s a mistake I certainly won’t make again.” 

John holds his gaze for a long time, then he smiles ever so slightly. “Good.”

Silence descends again, and they just look at each other. John’s eyes are very dark and very blue and very calm. Sherlock swallows. He feels a curious warmth travel through his body. His breathing has quickened a little. John’s eyes are heavy and he’s smiling a little. The very air between them seems charged, dense. John licks the salt off his lips.

Sherlock’s stomach rumbles and just like that, the tension dissipates. John smiles at him fondly and slides the plate over. “Want to share?”

The treacherous organ in Sherlock’s chest does a complicated thing, speeds up and twists and makes its presence felt. Sherlock takes a chip and eats it mechanically. “The chips are revolting,” Sherlock says, voice not entirely steady.

John smiles. “The tea’s nothing to write home about either.”

Sherlock grins, and suddenly they’re laughing and can’t stop. 

And all the while, Sherlock thinks, _Next time there'll be two of us, Jim, and we'll beat you, and then I'll make a bad joke, and John will laugh anyway, because I was the one making it, and I won't be alone again, but you will always be alone. So you want to burn the heart out of me, you're welcome to try. At least it will finally prove that I have one._


	2. Stake-out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place between TGG and ASiB

Sherlock has no idea what time it is. It must be well after midnight. They left Scotland Yard around nine pm, and they’ve been sitting in the back of Lestrade’s car, waiting for their murder suspect to show up, for at least three hours. 

Sherlock would very much like to check the time on his phone, but both his arm and his phone are trapped by a sleeping John Watson, who is currently using Sherlock as a pillow.

The car is quiet. Lestrade went for coffee about 30 minutes ago. John has been asleep for about fifteen of these minutes. 

Sherlock should really wake John up. John’s neck will cramp if he sleeps like this any longer, and they need to be ready to move to catch their suspect at a moment’s notice. Besides, John won’t like being caught all but snuggling against Sherlock by Lestrade, or at least Sherlock is almost sure that John won’t like it. John’s been inconsistent about this, unpredictable like he is about so many other things. 

So Sherlock has a few very good reasons why he really should wake John up.

And he is going to, any minute now. 

Any minute now.

Any minute.

It’s warm in the car, and dark, and quiet. John’s sagged against him, asleep, trusting, warm. If he tilts his head to the right, his cheek brushes the top of John’s head, just ever so slightly. He can feel John’s surprisingly soft hair against the skin of his face, smell his shampoo. He shifts his arm a little, and John sags even further against him, rests more of his body against Sherlock’s, and Sherlock feels the warmth of him through the layers of clothes between them, feels the wool of John’s jumper pressing against the thin cotton of his shirt. 

It occurs to him that he’s being ever so slightly irrational. But at the same time he doesn’t want to wake John. They’ve had little sleep lately; the case kept them up, and before that John had a few bad nights, nightmares driving him out of bed at three in the morning. John needs to rest. And Sherlock… well, if he’s entirely honest with himself, and he always tries to be, well, Sherlock’s sort of… enjoying this. The very fact that John fell asleep waiting on a murderer is so very John-like that Sherlock can’t help but find it endearing, if slightly inconvenient. It’s such unmistakeable proof that he _trusts_ Sherlock on an instinctive level, and it makes Sherlock feel… something. Which is highly unusual. 

Also, he can’t remember the last time anyone’s touched him for more than a few seconds at the time, and all this contact, this warm body-skin-hair-breath so close to his own, all so freely given, so unconsciously generous, well, it sends a quiet shiver of pleasure down Sherlock’s spine. 

The car door opens. Sherlock starts a little, but John doesn’t stir, and Sherlock is both relieved and slightly embarrassed. 

The car dips slightly as Lestrade drops heavily into the front seat. 

Sherlock can feel Lestrade’s gaze on them. He meets Lestrade’s eyes in the rearview mirror and raises his eyebrows, daring him to comment. 

Lestrade just smirks. 

“You want one of the coffees?” Lestrade asks quietly.

Sherlock shushes him, annoyed. John snorts a little in his sleep and shifts against Sherlock.

Quiet settles over the car. It’s a cool night. The warmth of John and the soothing cadence of his breathing is lulling Sherlock into a doze.

Lestrade’s phone rings. He’s got a very loud, very annoying ringtone. 

John starts awake, sitting up quickly, looking out of the window. “Anything happening?”

“No,” Sherlock all but growls, hating Lestrade a bit for breaking their comfortable bubble. “Lestrade just wants to alert the entire neighbourhood to our presence.”

John snorts. He rubs at his eyes and runs his hand through his hair. He still looks rumpled and soft and warm and Sherlock wants nothing more than to touch him, pull him back, make him lie down again, run his fingers through John’s unruly hair until he falls asleep again.

John smiles at him, a soft, embarrassed, warm little smile, entirely private. “Sorry I fell asleep on you.”

For a moment, Sherlock has trouble finding his voice. Something unspeakable is sitting on his tongue, clogging up his throat. “No problem,” he finally presses out, glad that he manages to sound relatively normal.

John rubs at his neck and looks at Sherlock fondly. “You make a surprisingly comfortable pillow, given how little you eat.”

Sherlock has nothing to say to that, at least nothing he can ever imagine himself saying out loud - _You can sleep on me any time you want_ is definitely out - so he just nods and meets John’s eyes.There’s something in John’s gaze, something warm, something _more_. Something terrifying. He can’t quite bring himself to look away.

Lestrade clears his throat, and Sherlock whips his head around, annoyed at both the interruption and at Lestrade’s mere existence. 

“Coffee, John?” Lestrade offers, carefully neutral, but he looks amused.

John nods. “Yes, please, but first I need to step out for a sec.”

John carefully checks that nobody is watching them, then gets out of the car and jogs over to the small petrol station around the corner. 

Silence falls. Sherlock glares over at the house they’re supposed to be watching, hoping their suspect will show up soon. He’s sick of this car. 

“Sherlock?” Lestrade sounds hesitant, tentative. Like he has something to say that Sherlock won’t want to hear.

“Your instincts are usually good at this sort of thing, Lestrade, so if you think I won’t want to hear it, you’re probably right,” Sherlock snaps.

Lestrade meets Sherlock’s eyes in the rearview mirror and smirks. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Take whatever you like, just shut up.”

Silence.

“You know, for the longest time, I wasn’t sure that you actually like him,” Lestrade finally says, slowly, carefully. 

“How many different ways do I need to tell you to stop talking? ” Sherlock snaps. 

Lestrade sighs and rubs a hand over his face, obviously tired after a long day. “Fine, I won’t say anything more. Just…” he turns around and looks at Sherlock directly. “Life is short. People who truly make it better are very rare.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Now I know who to turn to if I ever decide to go into the fortune cookie industry.”

Lestrade snorts and puts up his hands. “I give up. Do as you like, you always do. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when one of his girlfriends finally sticks.”

Sherlock doesn’t dignify this with a response, and anyway it’s too late for one, because John is back, looking far more awake, smiling at him and Lestrade, obviously excited for the chase again. Lestrade hands him a coffee, and they settle down to watch the house, Lestrade and John chatting quietly about football.

Sherlock watches the house in silence and tries to pretend that he isn’t thinking about what Lestrade said. 

It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it before. It’s not like it isn’t tempting to give into the pull, every time they stumble back to their dark flat after a successful case, adrenaline rushing, eyes meeting, sparks flying. It would be so easy just to grab John, fist his hands in his jacket, push him against the wall and kiss him. 

And then what? 

What if he doesn’t like it? He’s almost never liked it, all that touching, all that messy fumbling, and for what, a short high inferior to any purely, pristinely chemical ones.

What if John doesn’t like it? What if he isn’t any good at it? He hasn’t had much practice, after all. What if he likes it and John doesn’t? What if John likes it and he doesn’t? What if neither of them likes it? What if they both do and he loses even more of his head to John, what if Moriarty comes back and sees John written all over Sherlock’s body and wraps him in Semtex again? What if John just wants to experiment and what if Sherlock doesn’t and what if John then decides he doesn’t want this after all and Sherlock does? What if John wants something Sherlock can’t give him? He’s a heartless bastard after all, isn’t he? Caring isn’t an advantage. He already cares too much about John. 

Better to let sleeping dogs lie. John is here, after all, not with his current girlfriend, whose name he probably doesn’t even remember right now. Choosing Sherlock. Beside him, gladly, smiling, happy. Why tamper with something perfect, Sherlock thinks as their prey finally, finally, arrives and they burst out of the car, chasing after the criminal through the darkened London streets that are home, battlefield, playground and hunting ground all in one. John grins at him as they run, and Sherlock thinks, _Things don’t get better than this._


	3. Stars

It’s cold in the desert at night. 

This isn’t new information for Sherlock, but he never had the opportunity until now to verify that fact by personal observation. 

He wraps his coat more tightly around himself and shifts to a more comfortable position on the sack of grain that’s currently serving as his seat.

Irene raises her head and looks at him questioningly. She’s been quiet since he rescued her. Unusually so, he reckons, from the short time he’s known her. She was nervous and fidgety for the first two hundred miles or so, but they’re almost at the airfield now, and she’s grown increasingly calm the farther her would-be executioners are behind them. “Anything the matter?” she asks, quietly, not wanting to startle the driver, a local who picked them up in exchange for a few pounds.

Sherlock shakes his head. He’s tired and doesn’t want to admit it. He would like to sleep, but he doesn’t trust Irene enough to close his eyes in her presence. 

The driver turns around and says something to them, in what Sherlock is reasonably sure is Pashto, and Sherlock asks himself for the millionth time why he didn’t bring John along for this. Reasonably, logically, pragmatically, he should have. But if he’s entirely honest with himself, he wasn’t sure he was going to pull this off and he wasn’t about to risk John’s life for somebody John doesn’t especially care for. And if he’s even more honest with himself, he didn’t because he hates the way John looked at Irene, the resigned sadness of it. 

Sentiment. Again. He needs to stop making decisions based on what John Watson _feels_. 

“What happens when we get to the airfield?” Irene asks, carefully neutral. Technically speaking, he should turn her over to his brother. They both know that he won’t. 

Sherlock shrugs. “I’ve hired a private plane that will get us to Karachi airport. After that, you’re on your own.”

Irene shifts, and leans closer. Sherlock can smell a whiff of her face cream, her shampoo, subtle but there. The moonlight softens her sharp edges, makes her even more beautiful. “Come with me,” she says, softly, almost inaudibly. 

Surprised and trying not to show it, Sherlock asks, “Where?”

Irene grins. “Anywhere. We could do anything. Be anything. Think of it, Sherlock. No more boring rules. We go where we want, do what we want. Who could stop the two of us, together?”

Sherlock looks at her, the hundreds of individual data points that make up Irene Adler, trying to gauge how serious she is about this. 

In a way, they’re perfectly matched. She’s clever and ruthless, but not completely without any moral compass whatsoever. She’d keep him on his toes, always scheming and crossing and double-crossing, adventure and crime, yes, but high-stakes, victimless, bloodless, high-gain, a constant balancing act between just far enough and too far. Never bored. Never settling for anything less than the best he can do. 

Never being nagged to eat, to sleep, to clean up after himself, to be _nice_.

Never at rest. Never trusting her. Never relying on her. Never looking at her and feeling safe, or understood, or _seen_ as a person, not just a brain in a moderately attractive jar. 

It’s surprising, that last thought. It shows him how much his self-perception has shifted over the last year. He was always proud of being a brain with a transport attached. It occurred to him only recently that being seen as a whole person with heart and a soul as well as a mind is occasionally not entirely unpleasant.

Sherlock looks up at the stars and, oddly, thinks of the sofa back in Baker Street. 

If he lies with his feet to the window and tilts his head just so, he can sometimes see a lone star twinkling through the light pollution. 

He closes his eyes and tries to identify the feeling of tight longing behind his breastbone. Finally, he can put words to it. “You go where you want. I’m going home.”


	4. Domesticity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place between THoB and TRF

_Sunday_

John wakes to a bumping sound.

He strains his ears to identify it, but for a moment, it’s quiet. 

Then again.

Silence.

Again.

Sure now that something is bumping against the wall of the sitting room, he gets out of bed and stumbles down the stairs. Most likely Sherlock is just up to Sherlockian things, but there is a distinct possibility that the something bumping against the wall might be Sherlock himself being thrown against it - wouldn’t be the first time - so John goes to investigate.

Sherlock is standing in the middle of the sitting room holding a tennis racket and a tennis ball. 

There’s a jack-o’-lantern sitting on the back of the sofa.

Sherlock looks up when John enters, and his expression resembles that of a small child caught with his hand in the biscuit jar. It’s adorable, not that John would ever admit that out loud. 

Still, he can’t suppress a smile, and he knows his amusement shows in his voice. “So what is this, then?” he asks, even though he can probably guess.

“I’m trying to determine whether a well-aimed tennis ball could have caused the injuries in a case I’m consulting on for a Bulgarian client. Obviously.” He manages to sound defensive and superior at the same time.

John laughs, and it startles a smile out of Sherlock. He looks down at the racket, then turns it around and offers it to John. “Want to try?”

It’s 3:30 am. A sane man would go back to bed. 

John grins. He has never claimed to be sane. “Give it here.”

Sherlock grins back and hands John the racket and the ball. “You realise a pumpkin doesn’t have the same qualities as a human body, right?” John asks as he positions himself.

“Molly threw me out of the morgue after I shattered one of her lamps,” Sherlock mutters.

“Of course she did,” John says. “Well then, I’m in the mood for soup anyway.”

Sherlock laughs, and John swings and serves. Again. The pumpkin shatters very satisfyingly.

John turns to Sherlock, who’s looking at him with an indecipherable expression. “Tea?”

_Monday_

Voices. Glass shattering.

John is out of bed with his gun in his hands in two seconds flat.

He runs down the stairs and almost collides with an oddly dressed woman he recognises as a member of Sherlock’s homeless network.

The sitting room is populated with ten or so members of that network, and Sherlock is standing in the middle of the room, pacing between them, checking what they’re doing. He’s in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and his hair's a mess, probably because he’s running his hands through it constantly; in short he’s in full mad-professor mode. Each of them has a clipboard with a questionnaire on it, and each is holding a pencil and filling it out.

John blinks at the woman he almost ran over; she’s apparently on her way out the door. She hands him a filled-out questionnaire, and John drops it automatically on a pile of clipboards by the door.

The shattered-glass sound was a vase - John didn’t know they owned one - that fell to the floor in the kitchen. 

John contemplates asking what any of this is supposed to be for a moment, but he hasn’t had a lot of sleep, and decides that he doesn’t care. He goes back upstairs and is asleep again within minutes.

_Tuesday_

John gets in about a quarter before midnight. He’s just a bit on the happy side of drunk; his rugby mates were in a generous mood this evening, and he didn’t refuse the pints they put in front of him. 

He hears the music as soon as he opens the door to 221 and freezes. 

The thing is, Sherlock plays the violin constantly. At six in the morning, in the afternoon, in the middle of the night, he plays while John is trying to eat, sleep, watch telly, work, have a conversation on the phone.

But he plays offhandedly, almost as an aside, to distract himself, to think, automatically and almost unconsciously, a side note, an afterthought. 

This, though, this is something else. This is Sherlock when he thinks nobody is listening. The way he plays sometimes in the middle of the night when he thinks John is asleep. Beautiful and real and with so much heart, it always makes John’s chest ache a little, in that unexamined space just beneath his breastbone, the place that tugs and stings whenever Sherlock is being… well, Sherlock. 

For a moment, he hesitates. He feels oddly like he’s walking in on Sherlock doing something that he has no right to see, that is none of John’s business.

He can’t stay on the landing forever. But five minutes more won’t hurt anyone. So he sits down on the steps and closes his eyes and lets the music tug at that space in his chest.

Then he gets up and opens and closes the front door. Loudly.

Predictably, the music stops instantly.

He goes up the stairs and opens the door to their flat. 

Sherlock is standing at the window, back to John. He’s holding his violin carefully away from him, as if to dissociate himself from the instrument, and John wonders for the millionth time why Sherlock is so very, very cautious with his heart, not only with sharing it, but with its very existence. 

He wonders again who reliably informed Sherlock that he has no heart, and whether John could kill them and hide their body so it will never be found.

“You’re back early,” Sherlock says without turning around. There’s something in his voice John can’t quite place. Tiredness, yes, but something else, too. Boredom? Loneliness? All three? 

Well, he can’t help with the first two, but he can keep Sherlock company for a bit, at least. 

John shrugs, even though Sherlock can’t see him. “Slow night. Tea?”

Sherlock hums in agreement. 

John goes into the kitchen and puts the kettle on, rummages around for mugs and tea bags. The slight buzz he felt earlier has evaporated; he feels wide awake now, and sober. 

John makes the tea, and sets Sherlock’s mug on the sofa table.

Sherlock thanks him with a nod, but doesn’t turn around. He starts playing again, and it’s the usual distracted, absent fiddling John is used to. There’s something definitely off about Sherlock, but he has no idea what it might be.

But John has learned that prodding Sherlock about anything results in Sherlock rolling into a prickly ball of sarcastic remarks and sharp insults, so John says nothing, asks no questions, just sits on the sofa and listens to Sherlock hide his heart again until he falls asleep.

_Wednesday_

John isn’t sure what woke him up. He lies in the comfortable, familiar darkness of his room and listens to the sound of 221B. Light traffic even at this late hour. Mrs Hudson’s grandfather clock in the landing. Sherlock rustling downstairs. Again.

There’s an odd buzzing sound, and John wonders what Sherlock’s up to now. He was oddly restless all evening after John came home from work, pacing the length of the sitting room like a caged animal. Then he got a text and disappeared, and didn’t come home until John was in bed.

John gets up, pulls on his dressing gown and goes downstairs, trying to be quiet in the event that Sherlock is actually asleep.

Sherlock’s sitting on the sofa. Half a dead pig is lying on their coffee table. The buzzing is a tattoo machine.

John pauses in the doorway and blinks, takes a moment to come to grips with the fact that his flatmate is tattooing a dead pig in the middle of the night. 

“Why are you tattooing a dead pig?” John asks.

Sherlock starts violently. He looks up at John and there’s something there, something John can’t put his finger on, something in Sherlock’s face, a tension. “Well, I can’t very well tattoo a live one, can I?” Sherlock snaps.

John is too tired for this conversation. “I’m going back to bed,” he says, and walks back upstairs.

He’s on the fifth stair when he realises. 

He turns back and goes into the sitting room, then he crosses to his chair and sits down, angling so he can look at Sherlock. 

Sherlock stops tattooing the dead pig - John is pretty sure he doesn’t want to know why Sherlock is doing this in the first place - and watches him with a mixture of curiosity and wariness.

“You’re not sleeping.” It’s not a question.

Sherlock doesn’t answer.

“How long?” John asks, and curses himself for an idiot for not seeing the signs sooner. Sherlock is restless, pale, with a crackling, manic energy about him that’s never a good sign. John had put it down to understimulation - they haven’t had many cases since they came back from Devonshire - but he realises now that it’s sleep-deprivation.

“Sunday,” Sherlock answers, eyes still on the pig. “How did you know?”

John huffs a humorless laugh. “First, I’m a doctor. Second, nobody who doesn’t have a sleep problem tattoos a dead pig at three in the morning, and third, personal experience.”

Sherlock looks up at that last one, and John can see the exhaustion now. He remembers how it feels when you can’t sleep, for days, for weeks, like every hour of the night is mocking you with the promise of rest, and every day is an endless tunnel of grey exhaustion until you can finally lie down again, only for the whole ugly cycle to start again. 

“Do you go to bed at all?” John asks, as gently and as clinically as possible, aware that he has to tread carefully here, because if he feels like he’s being pushed and prodded, Sherlock will clam up, and then John won’t be able to help him.

But Sherlock just nods, still addressing the dead pig. “I lie in bed for as long as I can stand it, and then I get up.”

“Have you slept at all?” 

Sherlock shakes his head.

John doesn’t press him on it, even though he knows it’s medically almost impossible to go four days without sleep. Probably Sherlock fell asleep several times without noticing, but John knows from training and experience that telling Sherlock this won’t help right now, and will only make Sherlock defensive.

Thinking back over the last few days, especially Sunday, John tries to identify what might have happened to cause this insomnia. Sherlock never sleeps that much, and he can go longer without it than most people John knows, but usually when John comes home from the pub - or date nights, but he hasn’t been on many of those lately and he won’t start asking himself why now - Sherlock is already asleep, and he’s often still asleep when John leaves for work in the morning. 

Friday they were at the bank robbery crime scene, and Sherlock didn’t seem very interested; he didn’t give Lestrade his usual waterfall of deductions, he just laid out the most pertinent facts and left. The whole thing took ten minutes and was completely unremarkable. Saturday John was at the clinic, and Sherlock was still in his dressing gown when John came back. They watched a bit of telly and Sherlock fell asleep on the sofa. Sunday they had lunch out and walked a bit around Regent’s Park then spent the rest of the day reading in companionable silence in the sitting room. Nothing happened.

Maybe that’s the problem. John gets off his chair. “Lie down on the sofa.”

Sherlock looks up from the pig. “Why?”

“To get your brain to stop eating itself when you try to sleep?” John suggests.

Sherlock frowns. “This isn’t your problem. I can handle it.”

John sighs and rubs a hand over his face, wondering how many times they have to have this conversation. “Of course you can handle it. But it is my problem, since you’re my friend and I care about you. Also, I’m your doctor and lack of sleep is severely unhealthy. Lie down on the couch. Doctor’s orders.”

The slight smile that flickers over Sherlock’s face is gone so quickly that anyone who wasn’t watching him as closely as John was wouldn’t even notice it. Then Sherlock gets up and rolls his eyes, nonchalant mask back in place. “Fine, whatever you say, Doctor.”

He stretches out on the sofa, and John goes into the kitchen to switch off the lights. The sitting room smells strongly of dead pig, so he heaves the carcass into the kitchen and cracks a window. Then he turns off the lights in the sitting room and waits for a moment while his eyes adjust to the darkness.

“Comfortable?” he asks quietly. 

“What exactly is the point of this?” Sherlock asks, and if John didn’t know him so well, he would miss the wary vulnerability of the question. Sherlock _hates_ that he has human weaknesses like hunger and thirst and a body that needs to sleep. And he hates it even more when people know he has human weaknesses, and mention it to him. 

John sits down on the floor next to Sherlock’s head, and Sherlock turns to watch John warily. John smiles. “Trust me,” he says, and he knows it’s unfair to use this knock-out argument, but Sherlock needs help and John won’t be out-stubborned by Mr My-Body-Is-Transport. 

“Fine,” Sherlock sighs and John can see him try and fail to relax.

“Close your eyes.”

Sherlock closes his eyes, but not before giving John a deeply suspicious glare. 

“How did you get the pig?”

“Seriously?”

“Shut up and tell me.”

“Fine.”

John smiles. Sherlock has mastered the art of rolling his eyes with his voice.

“I picked it up at the meat market.”

“How did you get there?”

“Tube.”

“Good. Do you remember the train ride? The people?”

Sherlock nods. 

“Go into your mind palace and tell me about the people. Tell me what you can deduce.”

Sherlock is silent for a second. “Blonde woman, divorced, recently, mark from the ring hadn’t faded yet, hair dyed, too much make-up, husband cheated on her with a younger woman. Two children, primary school…”

He goes on and on, people, details, deductions, and John feels a bit like he’s on that train with Sherlock, watching him take them apart with his words. Occasionally, John asks a question, but mostly he lets Sherlock talk and talk until he notices that Sherlock is starting to relax. 

Then, slowly, so as to not spook Sherlock, John shifts a bit and places gentle fingers on each side of Sherlock’s temples. He gently splays his fingers along Sherlock’s scalp and starts to gently massage. 

Sherlock trails off mid-sentence, and John prompts him quietly, “Keep talking. You were saying, about the man with the moustache?”

Sherlock opens his eyes and just looks at John, and the quiet, peaceful intimacy of the moment makes John’s heartbeat pick up. John swallows, and for a moment he thinks of leaning down and pressing his lips to Sherlock’s forehead, just briefly. “Why are you doing this?” Sherlock asks, and John knows that he’s genuinely puzzled. 

John feels an overwhelming sadness well up in him because this brilliant, unique genius of a person has genuine trouble believing that people love him. “That’s what friends do,” he answers gently, because he can’t force the truth past the lump in his throat. 

“I had a nightmare,” Sherlock says, quietly, almost inaudibly. 

John keeps silent, hoping that Sherlock will talk some more about it. His fingers on Sherlock’s scalp keep rubbing gently in little circles, and he feels some of the tension go out of Sherlock’s body. 

Sherlock’s eyes slip closed, and when he speaks again, John can barely hear him. “The pool. Moriarty. Only this time I shot at the bomb and we ran, and ran, and ran.” 

Sherlock’s eyes snap open and he looks at John intently. “He’s coming back.”

John’s fingers still for a moment, and he frowns. “We’ve always known that.”

Sherlock’s eyes unfocus, and John knows he’s not looking at John right now, but at something in the vastness of his mind, something only he would see. “There was something about that bank robbery. It was so neat, so precise.” His eyes focus back on John. “You do know that I would never have run.”

John smiles and his heart does a complicated little twist, because yes, he knows, knew from the moment Sherlock looked at him at the pool, the moment he got his first true glimpse of Sherlock Holmes’ heart. He nods. “I know.” His fingers resume massaging Sherlock’s scalp, and John leans down and whispers into Sherlock’s ear, “I also know that we’ll beat him. We’ll be stronger, braver, better than him, and we’ll beat him. I won’t let him hurt you. Not ever again.”

Sherlock doesn’t answer, and his even breathing tells John that he has fallen asleep. He leans down and lets his lips brush against Sherlock’s forehead, just once, hating himself a bit for that stolen caress that would never be welcome if Sherlock were awake. 

After about ten minutes, he takes his hands out of Sherlock’s hair and walks over to his chair. 

He sits down, watching over Sherlock’s sleep in the same way he watches over his friend’s life. With the dawn he lets Sherlock’s even breaths lull him into a doze.

Sherlock doesn’t stir.


	5. Wishful Thinking

It’s dark in the cell. 

His arms hurt from being tied behind the chair back for hours.

His back hurts from the latest beating.

It’s all uncomfortable, but bearable.

If only they’d let him sleep. 

Every hour, they come into his cell. Lights on, loud music, startling him out of the doze his exhausted mind has sunk into. 

He hasn’t really slept in 48 hours. If this continues for much longer, he knows he’ll crack. 

“Did they hit your head?” John asks. 

He’s sitting against the opposite wall of Sherlock’s cell. Sherlock managed to keep him locked away in his mind palace for the last two years, but sometime during the last few days the wall around the part of himself he’s had to lock away to survive this, the part of himself that _feels_ , that _wants_ , has cracked. And somehow John has spilled out, and he’s been keeping Sherlock company in the dark.

“No. They’ve been careful not to do any permanent damage.”

“Nausea, double vision, hallucinations?”

“No. Well…” he tips his head at John.

“Is it a hallucination if you know it’s not real?” John asks, and the amused warmth in his voice soothes over Sherlock’s raw nerves like a balm.

“Cambridge dictionary defines a hallucination as an experience in which you see, hear, feel, or smell something that does not exist,” Sherlock quotes. “It doesn’t specify the hallucinator’s knowledge of the hallucination as a determining factor.”

“Good to know they haven’t beaten the smart-arse out of you yet. So, genius, how are you going to get out of here?” John eases himself up from his crouch and looks around the cell.

“No way out, as far as I can see,” Sherlock notes, and flexes his bound arms. “Not that I can get out of these.”

“They’re really good,” John agrees. He crouches back down before him, looking at Sherlock with concerned affection. “It’s alright to be scared, Sherlock.”

The denial is on the tip of Sherlock’s tongue, but then he realises how ridiculous it is to lie to himself. “They won’t kill me.”

“Not as long as they think you’ll break,” John agrees. “So you need to give them something. Soon. Before they break you for real and you give them everything.”

Sherlock shivers, and John leans forward. “Just a little while longer,” he whispers into Sherlock’s ear, and Sherlock wants to collapse into the warmth of John’s voice.

“Soon,” John mutters. “Soon. Just this one more, Mycroft said, and then you can come home.”

Home.

The very idea of being homesick used to be ridiculous to Sherlock. Four walls and a permanent address aren’t things you miss. 

Now, he yearns for Baker Street with a single-minded eagerness he hasn’t felt since he was a small child, before Christmas mornings lost their magic. 

“I wonder what we’ll do, when you come back,” John says, settling down on the floor opposite Sherlock’s chair. 

“Angelo’s, obviously,” Sherlock says, closing his eyes and thinking of the way the buttery risotto melted on his tongue the few times he let himself actually enjoy his food.

“The Chinese on Marylebone Road, the one with the dim sum,” John adds.

“The ducks. At the small pond.”

“The little French place, with the chocolate thingies.”

“I want my violin.” Oh what he’d give to have it now, to put bow to strings and just let the music take him anywhere it pleases. 

He wants his own bed; he wants a door that locks the world out. He wants Mrs Hudson downstairs and John upstairs and himself in the middle, sandwiched between people who care about him, maybe too much for their own good. 

He opens his eyes and looks at John. “Will you be happy to see me?”

“Of course. You and me against the world, just like it used to be,” John says, but Sherlock can hear the doubt there, the uncertainty, the lie.

No. That’s wrong. John Watson doesn’t lie. He might evade, or side-step, or ignore an obvious truth, but he doesn’t lie.

So he tries again. “Will you be happy to see me?”

John sighs and smiles at Sherlock a little sadly. “I can’t answer that, Sherlock.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t tell you something you don’t already know.”

Sherlock closes his eyes again and thinks, as the door opens, the lights go on, and it begins again, that he needs to survive this, because he needs to know the answer to that question.


	6. Forgiveness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during TEH

It’s long after midnight when John is finally declared fit to leave. He feels like he’s been run over by a bus, still drowsy from the drugs that were used by whoever kidnapped him to knock him out, and his lungs hurt from the smoke inhalation. 

Mary went home about two hours ago when it was clear that John would be made to stay until his blood tests came back. No sense in both of them being exhausted tomorrow.

He hasn’t seen Sherlock since he regained consciousness after they dug him out of the fire. He only got a short glimpse of him, leaning against a tree, pale and drawn and looking about as done in as John feels right now. 

He gets dressed and steps out of the examination room, looking around. A part of him is deeply relieved that Sherlock is nowhere to be seen, and a part of him is equally deeply disappointed.

He’s tried really hard in the last 24 hours not to think of Sherlock, and he’s having a difficult time thinking of anything else. And every time he thinks of last night, the entire shit-show of Sherlock showing up as a waiter and the subsequent deterioration of the evening, John has to fight the urge to laugh hysterically at the same time as he feels like curling up into a ball and crying his eyes out.

To say he is conflicted would be the understatement of the bloody century.

He steps out into the cool night air, letting the brisk November night slap him awake after the drowsy warmth of the hospital. 

He looks around for a cab, but then he notices a black car with tinted windows sliding up to the curb. 

“Oh no,” he groans, rubbing a hand over his face. He has no energy left for Mycroft. 

Resolutely, he walks past the car.

The back door opens.

“I’m afraid I must insist, John,” Mycroft says mildly.

“Well, given that you spent the last two years letting me grieve, you can fuck right off,” John bites, surprised by how swiftly the anger is back, how brightly it burns. He hates himself for the way his hand trembles and his voice almost breaks.

Two years. Two fucking years. 

“You have every right to be upset. But believe me that neither of us ever thought the situation was anything other than unfortunate.”

Unfortunate.

John turns around to face Mycroft. “You really want to have this conversation now? In the middle of the bloody night after I was almost burned alive?”

“I very much think we need to have this conversation now, after my brother dug you out of a fire with his bare hands,” Mycroft says, still in the same mild tone, but John hears the steel underneath, and he knows he can’t fight this. 

He isn’t even entirely sure he wants to.

“Fine,” he bites out and gets into the car. “I suppose I don’t have to tell you where I live.”

Mycroft doesn’t dignify this with an answer, and silence falls as the driver slowly pulls into the very light late-night traffic. 

John stares out of the window, resolving not to be the first to speak. If Mycroft has something to say to him, then he can just come right out and say it.

“You know,” Mycroft begins, “when you first moved in with my brother, I contemplated arranging for you to have an unfortunate fatal accident. I’m beginning to regret not going through with it.”

John turns to Mycroft, who is regarding the top of his umbrella with an expression of mild academic interest. He would like to pretend to be shocked by the revelation, but he just doesn’t have the energy. “Why?” 

Mycroft looks up at John and gives him a slight, pitying smile. “Sentiment, Dr Watson. You exposed my brother to quite a lot of it.”

“Oh, god forbid, a Holmes having human emotions, how terrible. Am I supposed to be sorry for….” _loving him_ he almost says, and bites down on it. Not necessarily because he thinks Mycroft doesn’t already know this, but because saying it hurts too much. 

Mycroft doesn’t wait for him to finish; they both know how that sentence would end. “You’re a weakness, Dr Watson. If it hadn’t been for you, this entire charade could have been avoided. I’m sure I could have convinced Sherlock to accept Mrs Hudson’s and DI Lestrade’s death as necessary sacrifices for the sake of the nation. But you... “ Mycroft pauses for effect, the dramatic tosser. “Your loss was something my brother wasn’t prepared to accept under any circumstances.”

John snorts, incredulous. “You don’t honestly believe that Sherlock would just have let Mrs Hudson die, do you?”

“Oh, but I do. Mrs Hudson is old; her contributions to society are mostly in the past. DI Lestrade is a police officer. Death in the line of duty is a risk he willingly accepts. But you... you, Dr Watson, are my brother’s blind spot, the one person about whom he cannot be rational. If not for you, he would have shot Moriarty in the head and walked away.”

“That’s a load of bollocks, and you know it.” It’s almost a reflex, defending Sherlock. Not ten minutes ago, John would have told anyone who’d asked him that Sherlock Holmes is a heartless, soulless bastard who thought John’s grief for him was funny. But the thing is, he knows, deep down, that it’s not true. One look at his ragged, pale face after he dragged John out of that fire was enough to remind John that there’s an actual heart under all that invulnerable, untouchable, sociopathic bullshit. He glares at Mycroft. “Your problem is that you’ve never seemed to understand that Sherlock isn’t like you. He tries to be, but he isn’t. He has emotions, he cares about people, and because you’ve been whispering into his ear all his life that he’s just like you, he sees his heart as a defect that needs to be ‘cured’. And that’s why he has so much trouble believing that people actually care whether he lives or dies.”

Mycroft only looks at John mildly, and John snaps his mouth shut and glares out of the window, angry at himself that he let Mycroft goad him into defending Sherlock, angry at Mycroft for lying and lying and lying for two fucking years, angry at Sherlock for leaving him alone for so long. He blinks against the tears threatening again, and rubs his stinging eyes while Mycroft pretends not to see. 

“Did you have to make me watch?” he finally asks, the one question that’s been perlocating on the top of his mind for the last 24 hours.

“That was a very unfortunate turn of events. We didn’t actually plan on you being there. But it worked out rather well.”

John turns his head and stares at Mycroft, incredulous, but Mycroft holds out a hand to stop him from interrupting. “It was imperative for you to believe it. If you hadn’t, the plan wouldn’t have worked. You’re a horrible liar, John. For the life of you, you couldn’t pretend to be something that you’re not. It’s one of the reasons my brother appreciates your company, but it also necessitated your deception. Anyone who looked at you instantly believed my brother was dead.”

John swallows around the lump in his throat and looks out of the window again. “I’ll never forgive you for any of this. You lied to me for two years. Every time you saw me, you lied. Every word of comfort, all lies.”

“I have no need for your forgiveness,” Mycroft says. He pauses for a moment, then continues, and John can hear the steel behind the gentle words. “But my brother does. He would never admit it out loud, of course, but he needs you to forgive him. You were quite right about one thing, John.”

John looks up, surprised. “I was right? About what?”

Mycroft smiles thinly, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Sherlock isn’t entirely heartless. I am.”

John snorts. “Is that why you kidnapped me? To threaten me into forgiving him?”

Mycroft smiles, and this time it seems genuine. “No,” he says gently. “I was just trying to get you to realise that you already have.”

John shrugs, because he hates to admit it, but Mycroft is right. 

He can still feel it, all that ugly, dark, heart-rending grief he carried around with him for the last two years. And the fact that he knows Sherlock is alive doesn’t make it go away. On the contrary, it only makes it worse because it was entirely pointless. It’s a bit like the scar in his shoulder. The bullet is out, but the wound was real and it still hurts when it rains.

But a part of him wants nothing more than to get into a cab and go to Baker Street and see Sherlock Holmes sitting in his chair, waiting for him to sit in his. He wants to make them tea, and bicker about milk; he wants to scour the paper while Sherlock plays the violin; he wants cases and adventure and pointless danger and all the stupid, silly, unimportant things they used to argue about. 

He spent the last two years wanting Sherlock back so much it sometimes felt he could make it happen just by wishing for it hard enough.

And now that it’s actually happened, he can either hold on to his anger and his grief, or he can let it go, and finally allow himself to be happy that he has his friend back. 

The car stops, and John gets out into the cold night air, and with a last nod, he acknowledges that Mycroft is right.

Of course he’s forgiven Sherlock. Of course he will always forgive Sherlock.


	7. Reassurance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set just after TEH

Sherlock?  
Sent: 2:21 am

Yes? - SH  
Sent: 2:23 am

What is it? - SH  
Sent: 2:25 am

Nothing. Just… checking, I suppose   
Sent: 2:28 am

Checking what? -SH  
Sent: 2:30 am

That you’re still there  
Sent: 2:35 am

Where would I be? -SH  
Sent: 2:38 am

Um… dead?  
Sent: 2:43 am 

Oh. Right. Sorry. - SH  
Sent: 2:51 am

… That was the first time you apologised, you realise that?  
Sent: 2:55 am

Oh. Well, I am. Sorry, that is. Couldn’t be helped, but still. - SH  
Sent: 2:58 am

I know  
Sent: 3:02 am

I’m sorry too. For the other night. I might have punched you in the face one more time than you actually deserved  
Sent: 3:10 am

Just one? -SH  
Sent: 3:12 am

Maybe two :-)  
Sent: 3:18 am

Please, John, let us pretend that we’re adult men and refrain from using meaningless punctuation marks to poorly mimic human emotion. -SH  
Sent: 3:22 am

Sorry, forgot how much you hate emojis there for a sec  
Sent: 3:24 am

Why aren’t you asleep? It’s three in the morning  
Sent: 3:30 am

Might I remind you that you texted me? So I might very well turn this question around. -SH  
Sent: 3:32 am

Also you know I don’t sleep. - SH  
Sent: 3:33 am

I do know you sleep, I’ve seen you sleep every day for almost two years. You can fool everybody else with that whole I’m above all this human nonsense act, but I’ve seen you eat an entire package of chocolate biscuits and then fall asleep on the sofa during Jeremy Kyle, so you don’t fool me  
Sent: 3:35 am

Dodging the question, I see. -SH   
Sent: 3:37 am

You should talk. I asked first  
Sent: 3:39 am

Experiment. Now you.- SH  
Sent: 3:41 am

Nightmare  
Sent: 3:50 am

Afghanistan? - SH  
Sent: 3:52 am

St. Bart’s rooftop  
Sent: 4:01 am 

I’m never fast enough  
Sent: 4:02 am

I’m sorry. -SH  
Sent: 4:06 am

You already said  
Sent: 4:08 am

Well, it bears repeating, I think. - SH  
Sent: 4:10 am

I’m exhausted  
Sent: 4:20 am

Go back to bed. We’ll talk in the morning. - SH  
Sent: 4:21 am

Promise?  
Sent: 4:22 am

Yes. -SH  
Sent: 4:24 am

Sherlock?  
Sent: 4:35 am

Yes? - SH  
Sent: 4:37 am

Nothing. Just. Make sure you get some sleep, all right?   
Sent: 4:45 am

Good night, John. - SH  
Sent: 4:47 am

Good night  
Sent: 4:50 am

Sherlock?  
Sent: 5:10 am

Go to sleep, John. -SH  
Sent: 5:12 am

I’m just scared that I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and all of this will turn out to be a dream, and you’re still dead, and I’ve been talking to a ghost  
Sent: 5:15 am

I’m not a ghost. - SH  
Sent: 5:16 am

Prove it  
Sent: 5:17 am

That moustache is such an affront to the human eye that I wanted to pluck out every single one of your facial hairs. I’m glad you shaved it, otherwise I would have had to sedate you and actually go through with it, which would have been extremely tedious. - SH  
Sent: 5:20 am

… definitely you  
Sent: 5:21 am

Told you. Now go to sleep. - SH  
Sent: 5:24 am

Sherlock?  
Sent: 5:31 am

It’s 5:30 in the morning, John. Get some bloody sleep. -SH  
Sent: 5:33 am

Can’t. Besides, I’m hungry. Breakfast?  
Sent: 5:37 am

Starving. -SH  
Sent: 5:38 am

That French bakery on Sussex Place? Half an hour?  
Sent: 5:41 am

Meet you there. -SH  
Sent: 5:43 am

Sherlock?  
Sent: 5:45 am

What? -SH  
Sent: 5:49 am

I’ve missed you so much  
Unsent

See you in a few  
Sent: 5:51 am

Finish your sentences, John. -SH  
Sent: 5:54 am

Shut up, or I’ll spam you with emojis all day, and I know you won’t be able to resist finding out what each of them means  
Sent: 5:57 am

I hate you. -SH  
Sent: 6:01 am

Order me some coffee   
Sent: 6:03 am

Order your own coffee. - SH  
Sent: 6:05 am

Black, no sugar  
Sent: 6:08 am

I know, John. - SH  
Sent: 6:11 am

And a croissant  
Sent: 6:12 am

And one of the chocolate thingies, you know the ones  
Sent: 6:13 am

Anything else? - SH.  
Sent: 6:14 am

No. Just…  
Sent: 6:15 am

What? -SH  
Sent: 6:17 am

Just. Be there. Be real. Be alive  
Sent: 6:20 am

Promise. - SH  
Sent: 6:22 am


	8. Alone

_Check brother’s summer home for green lead paint - SH_

Sherlock presses send and sets his phone down next to the microscope. He checks the time on the screen. 2:33 am. He’s cold, and he’s hungry, and he needs to get some sleep, and he really should go home now. 

The lab is dark; the only light comes from a small desk lamp that sits to his right. It smells of chemicals and bad coffee. It’s eerily quiet in here, even though a hospital never sleeps. Up there, people are being born, people are dying, people are being stitched together and people are sleeping, laughing and crying, eating and bleeding, a humming beehive of human conditions. 

But down here, there is only silence and death. 

He wonders what it says about him that he feels more at home down here than up there.

The door opens and Molly enters, carrying two cups. From the smell, he can already tell that it’s more terrible coffee. 

She sets his mug down next to the skin samples she took from the victim of his latest murder case and nods at the microscope. “Anything?” she asks quietly, instinctively keeping her voice down, as people are wont to do in the dead of night.

Sherlock shrugs. “I solved it.”

Molly smiles at him, and he wonders how different she looks when she smiles. “That’s great.”

“It’s boring, barely a three,” Sherlock says dismissively. 

“You’re here at 2:30 am for a three?” 

Sherlock shrugs again and takes a sip of his coffee to avoid looking at her. 

Silence falls. Sherlock turns back to the microscope and changes slides. The pollen they found on the victim’s clothing might be further proof that she was in her brother’s garden shortly before she died. _I need to know what flowers grow in the brother’s garden.- SH_ Sherlock texts Lestrade.

“You could just get another flatmate,” Molly says, still watching him from the counter. 

He turns around and glares at her. She’s stirring her coffee thoughtfully and ignores his glare. Seeing him at his worst has removed any trace of awe Molly ever had of him. 

"Why would I want another flatmate?" Sherlock asks, and he hopes the dismissive tone will convince Molly to drop it. 

She gestures at the lab. "Because nobody who doesn't work here should hang around this place at 2:30 in the morning." 

He looks down at the slides and hates that she's right, that he is being obvious. That Molly Hooper of all people is feeling sorry for him. 

"I don't want a new flatmate." 

_I want my old one back._

Two years, and all that time he was so homesick, and now that he's back, he has to live with the fact that the home he was sick for is gone. 

Of course 221B is still there, and almost nothing has changed. The book he was reading when he left was still on the bedside table. The skull, the chairs, the sofa, his books, his violin, are all still in their place, barely touched by time. 

The chairs haven't moved; they still sit facing each other in front of the fireplace. 

Sherlock barely sits in his chair nowadays. 

"I know some people who are looking for flatshares you might get along with," Molly says, setting her cup of coffee down on the counter. 

Sherlock snorts. "I have no desire to meet new people, Molly. I can barely stand most people I already know." 

And he has even less desire to meet someone he will hate instinctively for _not_ being John Watson. 

Practically speaking, Molly's suggestion makes sense. A new flatmate would possibly alleviate his financial situation and could possibly be a reasonably pleasant companion. 

But. 

But. 

He still thinks of the room upstairs as John's, and he knows he always will. The mere thought of letting some stranger occupy John's space, sitting in his chair, drinking from his mugs... It's disgusting. And entirely irrational. 

Sherlock exhales audibly. He's so tired. He just wants to go home. All he wanted for two years was to go home. He wants two mugs of tea in the sink and pointless arguing about milk. He wants tennis matches in the middle of the night and reading in silence for hours. He wants chases through dark London streets and bad telly with the garlic Naan from that place with the good Mango Lassi. 

"Sherlock?" 

Sherlock looks up and meets Molly's compassionate gaze. 

"Fresh corpse just came in. Might be a good one. Do you want to watch the autopsy?" 

"Might as well, saves you the trouble of summoning me if it's interesting," Sherlock says, and he doesn't say thank you, doesn't show how much he appreciates Molly's quiet company, but he knows Molly sees right through his attempt to recapture some of the superior arrogance he used to have, when he took kindness for granted and still labored under the delusion that he had no friends and therefore nothing to lose. 

He's not sure that he wasn't better off before. 


	9. Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place right at the end of TSoT

Sherlock rarely misses the drugs. He can recreate the buzz cocaine gave him with cases and adrenaline.

Right now, though, he would commit actual, literal murder for a cigarette. 

The day was endless, and he hated every second of it. 

The cool night air bites at his fingers and toes. He can hear faint music, and the light from the hall filters out into the garden. The wedding party is still in full swing, but Sherlock is done. He’s done enough. If he has to endure one more second, the pain in his chest will consume him entirely and leave a heap of ashes behind.

Ashes. Oh, a cigarette. 

Or maybe something stronger.

Sweet, sweet chemical oblivion sounds extremely good right now.

He takes out his phone and opens his text program. He enters Billy Wiggins’ number and thinks about what he wants. 

“Sherlock! Wait up.” 

Sherlock curses inwardly and turns to Mrs Hudson. “What is it, Mrs Hudson?”

She walks up to him, struggling into her coat. He steps towards her and helps her automatically, and she pats him on the arm affectionately. “Thank you, dear.” She smiles at him. “I’m afraid I’m not as young as I once was. It’s a bit late for me, and I’m about to head home.” 

He nods and offers her his arm. “I was about to leave myself.”

She smiles at him compassionately. “I thought as much.”

He looks away, knowing that she is possibly the only person who truly knows just how horrible this day was for him. Except for maybe Mary. And possibly John. 

They walk towards the road arm in arm, not speaking, and he’s eternally grateful for her silent company. 

Sherlock flags down a taxi and they get in. Mrs Hudson gives the cabbie their address, and Sherlock settles into the seat, looking out at the drowsing city - London never really sleeps - with a feeling of relief that one only gets from surviving something awful and coming out on the other side surprised that life continues.

Millions of people out there going about their day - their night - normally, as if nothing whatsoever happened. As if hearts don’t break, lives don’t get shattered, and the future isn’t bleak and lonely and awful.

“It was a beautiful wedding,” Mrs Hudson says, quietly, gently, and Sherlock startles out of his contemplation. He’d forgotten she was in the cab with him. 

He makes a noise that could be construed as agreement. It _was_ a beautiful wedding. Aside from the whole almost-murder thing and the way he accidentally spilled his heart out in front of dozens of people. In front of Mary, who was watching him with a sort of morbid fascination, the way you can’t look away when people self-immolate. In front of John, who looked like his heart was breaking a little bit every time Sherlock said his name.

Mrs Hudson’s hand finds his across the worn leather of the seats, and squeezes. “That was a beautiful walz, dear.”

Sherlock presses his lips together and says nothing, but he doesn’t pull his hand away; he lets himself take comfort from her. He looks over at her. She’s looking at him, and there’s compassion there, but no pity. “I must confess that I was a bit worried during the ceremony that you would use the most dramatic moment to stop him from going through with this stupidity.”

Sherlock frowns at her in surprise. She smiles gently at him and continues, “And I wonder why you didn’t, when you so clearly wanted to.”

Sherlock looks down at their joined hands and his heart clenches as he sees the age spots, the knuckles of her fingers gnarled with arthritis, and he realises that - sooner rather than later - she’ll be gone, and he’ll have lost another person who loves him unconditionally for all the wrong reasons.

That moment in the wedding service, that phrase, has been stuck in his brain for the last - weeks, if he’s honest. Maybe months.

_Speak now, or forever hold your piece._

He heard it whispered repeatedly in his head, folding napkins, picking a venue, helping Mary choose the menu, going suit shopping with John.

It screamed through his head while he taught John how to dance, while he was composing the walz. It was nearly deafening on the stag night, during the pub crawl, during that ridiculous game they’d played, drunk and happy and content in front of their fireplace, once more just the two of them, in their chairs, in 221B. John’s hand on his knee, John looking at him with a question in his eyes. _Are you going to just let me get married?_

“It was his choice, not mine,” Sherlock points out, relieved that his voice sounds neutral, matter-of-fact.

“And do you think he made this choice fully aware of all the facts, and in sound mind and with rational judgement?” Mrs Hudson asks gently, squeezing his hand tightly. 

Sherlock looks out of the window again to escape the scrutiny of her gaze. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t think you fully understand the state John was in when you were gone.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Sherlock snaps, irritated at how everything always seems to lead back to this.

“Mary was a life raft. She kept him from drowning, and I’m grateful for that. But that’s not a very good reason to marry someone, and I’m pretty sure that boy is going to be back at your doorstep sooner rather than later. What are you going to do when he comes back?”

“I don’t know,” Sherlock says, and he hates that he’s sure that Mrs Hudson can hear how much the words pain him. 

The thing is, John has always been a walking contradiction. The things he thinks he wants and the things he actually wants, and the things he thinks he should want, are in constant conflict. John wants adventure and excitement, yes, but he also wants a normal, steady person who can show him affection without inhibition, who will go to dinner and shopping and to the theatre and the movies and to take walks and fall asleep in front of the telly with him. 

But John was happy with Sherlock. Before. Usually he had some boring girlfriend on the side, but they were little more than cover stories John told himself, and sometimes a good shag. All the things that _mattered_ , he did with Sherlock. Sherlock was the one he came home to, talked to, fell asleep in front of the telly with. 

And now there’s Mary, and she isn’t a cover story. She’s the one John goes home to. She provides both the cover and the substance. She saved John, the way Sherlock had done. Saved him from his loneliness and his depression. 

But Sherlock was there first. And Sherlock knows, somewhere deep down, that the reason Mary is nice to him, the reason they dance around each other and maintain a careful equilibrium is that they’re both terrified of making John choose, because neither of them is sure John would choose them. 

Mrs Hudson squeezes Sherlock’s hand to get his attention, and he squeezes back but doesn’t look at her, keeps gazing out of the window. He doesn’t know what she’d see in his face, and he doesn’t want to know. “You know, dear, the sad thing is, I think you’re equally terrified of him saying yes as you are of him saying no.”

The words are kindly spoken, but Sherlock feels them like a punch in the gut because they’re completely true. 

There’s one thing Sherlock knows about himself: He can’t do this. Not as long as he’s not entirely sure that he can be trusted with John’s heart. 

The entire episode of his return from the dead has shown impressively how very unfit he is for this. He’s the one who thought pranking his best friend after two years of letting him grieve was a good idea, after all. And Sherlock is terrified that he will do something similar again, that he will hurt John again, that this time, he will break something that can’t be repaired. 

And John as a friend, flatmate and partner in crime(solving) isn't entirely the same as John as a partner in every sense of the word. One who has the right to demand things from Sherlock. Honesty, secrets, intimacy. All the things Sherlock isn’t sure he can give. 

He thought about saying the words so often, during these endless weeks and months of slowly regaining his place in John’s life. _Don’t get married. Come back to me. Come back to 221B and stay with me forever._

But he can’t very well ask John not to get married and then not provide a better reason for it than, _Being best friends is good, but it’s not enough, but at the same time I can’t give you any more, so please abandon your fiance at the altar and come back to me so I won’t have to be lonely, no matter if you are._

“He’s happy,” he finally says to Mrs Hudson. “That’s all that matters.”

“I agree, dear,” Mrs Hudson answers with a sigh. “But it would be nicer if you could be happy too.”

Sherlock huffs a laugh, and Mrs Hudson pats his arm. “Look at the bright side. With divorce rates being what they are, we’ll have John back at Baker Street in three years, at the latest. Meanwhile, I suggest you find yourself a nice girl, or chap, and practice a bit.”

Sherlock laughs, looking over at her. She grins at him, unrepentant and wicked. “How much wine did you have?” he asks.

“Not nearly enough, dear,” she says, winking at him.

The cab stops in front of 221, and they get out. Sherlock pays the fare and Mrs Hudson unlocks the door. They stand in the foyer for a moment, then Mrs Hudson pulls him in for a fierce, long hug. 

For a moment, Sherlock allows himself to lean into it. She smells of chamomile soap and the flowery perfume she wears for special occasions. Her arms around him are surprisingly strong. “You will make him happier,” she whispers, and Sherlock lets her go, gently, kisses her on the forehead.

She pats his cheek. “Good night, dear.”

She opens the door to 221A and vanishes inside, and he goes up the steps to 221B and sits in his chair, staring at John’s chair, wondering about loneliness, and about how you only notice it when a space that was filled is suddenly empty. 

Tomorrow, he will put John’s chair in his room. It can wait there, to be ready if John returns. 

In the meantime, he texts Billy. His usual order, from before. Billy will remember.


	10. Bullets

Hospital wards are pretty much the same at 2:30 am the world over. John has reason to know. He’s spent more sleepless nights in hospital wards than he cares to remember. As a medical student, a doctor, a patient, a relative. It smells of antiseptics and bad coffee. The lighting is unflattering and dim. The sounds of snoring and groaning, the beeping of machinery are punctuated by the nurses’ tired tread squeaking on the linoleum floors. The chairs are plastic and uncomfortable. 

It’s almost comforting, the familiarity of it. 

Almost.

He’s been sitting in this chair for what feels like days. He occasionally gets up, goes to the bathroom, gets a horrible cup of tea. Stretches his limbs. Thinks about going home. Freezes in unholy terror. Goes back in, sits back down in the chair, resumes his vigil.

Occasionally, he’ll check the monitors or the charts, but it’s perfunctory; he knows what’s wrong with Sherlock, after all. What’s wrong with Sherlock is that John’s wife shot him through the chest. 

He wishes repetition would finally dull the pain. But every time he thinks about it, it hits him again like a sledgehammer. The person he thought he’d spend his life with shot the other person he thought he’d spend his life with (albeit for different values of spending a life with) in the chest. His wife, the mother of his unborn child, is a semi-psychotic assassin, such a brilliant liar she obviously fooled even Sherlock. Which begs the question, what else has she been lying about? Does he even know her at all? Is anything she ever told him true? 

He lets out a small frustrated sound. Sitting here going over this isn’t helping. Sherlock is asleep, has been for hours, and even when he’s conscious, he’s been so out of it he doesn’t even seem to know where he is. They’ve got him on a morphine drip, and John already knows withdrawal won’t be pretty. But at least he’s reasonably sure that Sherlock will live. 

He’s sure about absolutely nothing else right now, but Sherlock alive means he can go about sorting out the rest of it later. Once he gets some sleep. 

Rationally, he knows sitting here isn’t doing anyone any good. Sherlock doesn’t know he’s here. He can’t do anything to help; he needs sleep, a shower and a good meal (in that order), and by now every bone in his body hurts from that goddamned chair.

Truth be told, John’s not even sitting here because he’s overly worried that Sherlock will die anymore. He’s not afraid that Mary will come back because he knows Mycroft has stationed his people all over the hospital. 

Truth be told, John is sitting here because he has no idea what else to do. He can’t go home. He can’t possibly face Mary. He has no idea what will happen if he puts one foot in front of the other and walks out of this hospital. So what’s keeping him here is mostly inertia, with a side of despair.

“Fuck,” John whispers. His leg hurts. The one with the imaginary limp. It twinges in time with the beeps of Sherlock’s heart monitor. “I’m getting too old for this,” he mutters, even though he knows Sherlock can’t hear him. He’s also not entirely sure he wants Sherlock to hear him, because he’s not sure he’ll want to hear whatever Sherlock has to say. He knows he’s one of maybe three people on the planet who appreciate Sherlock’s bluntness, but he’s not sure he’s up to it right now. 

The thing is, he’s not entirely sure he can do this again. The whole holding himself together by the flimsiest of strings. The picking up pieces of himself and trying to fit them back together. He’s done this once - or twice - too often. 

He’s always managed somehow, but then, he’s always had help. After his mum died, the army helped. After he came back from Afghanistan, Sherlock helped. And after Sherlock, Mary helped. And now he’s going to have to be the one to help Sherlock recover from a gunshot wound to the chest, while feeling like he’s the one bleeding. 

Ironically, the thought that he needs to be there for Sherlock now is somewhat comforting. It’s something he knows he can do. Making sure Sherlock Holmes lives is John’s default setting, after all. 

He wonders what that says about him, as he contemplates Sherlock’s sleeping face. It’s more than obvious to him that he _needs_ Sherlock on a visceral level, or his entire sense of self collapses. He realises that it’s not exactly healthy, but there’s nothing he can do about it, especially right now. 

He closes his eyes and wonders whether it’s possible that he will pass out in this chair sooner or later.

“John?” 

Sherlock’s voice is so weak John isn’t sure he’s actually heard it for a moment, exhaustion blurring the lines between reality and imagination.

“John.” Stronger this time, and John looks up, directly into Sherlock’s eyes. He looks more alert than the last few times he’s been conscious, and John gets up immediately to give him some water.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Like I was shot,” Sherlock mutters, rolling his eyes a little at the general stupidity of the question, a point which John is willing to concede. “What time is it?”

“A little after 2 am. Have some more water,” John says and puts the straw back into Sherlock’s mouth.

Untypically for him, Sherlock complies without arguing, which tells John how rotten Sherlock feels.

When Sherlock’s done drinking, John sets down the cup on his nightstand and sits in his chair again.

“What are you doing here?” Sherlock says. “Watching me be unconscious?”

John shrugs, because, yes, pretty much. 

For a while, they watch each other silently, and John, as usual, has no idea what’s going on inside Sherlock’s head. Then Sherlock says, gently, “John. Go home.”

John shivers. “I can’t,” he says, looking at his hands, unable to hold Sherlock's gaze, his voice rough with emotion. “I can’t. She… I can’t.”

“John.” Still gentle, still so very gentle. 

John looks up. Swallows hard around the lump of emotion in his throat. “I’m so angry,” he whispers. “I can’t… I can’t see her now. I don’t know what to do.”

“John. Listen to me,” Sherlock says, still gently, but with a hint of authority now. “You don’t have to see her. You have another home to go to.”

John presses his lips together to keep himself from sobbing in relief when he thinks of 221B, the quiet calm of his room, the cozy mess of the sitting room, the sounds of Mrs Hudson hoovering, the dusty carpet, the bad water pressure. He’s so tired. So tired. “And then?” he asks. “What then?”

“Then,” Sherlock says, “we’re going to figure out a way for you to forgive her.”

John’s head snaps up and he stares at Sherlock, incredulous. “How can you say that? She shot you!”

Sherlock still sounds so very, very calm. “I know. But I also know that she’s pregnant with your child, and that’s not going anywhere.” He pauses ever so slightly, then continues, softly, barely audibly. “And I also know an act of desperation when I see one.”

For a moment, John is back on the pavement at Barts’, looking up to the roof, watching Sherlock do something unforgivable out of fear and desperation. 

“It’s not the same,” he says, voice not entirely steady. 

“Maybe,” Sherlock answers. “But I hurt you far worse, and you forgave me anyway.”

There’s nothing to say to that, because John isn’t entirely sure how to put into words how difficult it was to forgive Sherlock, and how easy. Essentially, Sherlock did what he did to save lives. There’s no way to spin what Mary did as anything other than purely selfish panic.

But she is pregnant. And John knows he’s going to have to try to find the other side of his anger. 

“John.” Sherlock calls John’s attention back to him. “Go home.”

“You’ll be here when I come back?”

Sherlock gives him a small smile. “I promise.”

John goes. He goes home - to 221 B - and he sleeps, and he showers, and he has breakfast, and he puts one foot in front of the other, because Sherlock needs him to, and that’s reason enough for now.


	11. Worth It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set directly after TAB

Sherlock wakes up disoriented for a moment, which is unusual for him. Normally when he is awake, he is awake, and when he is asleep he is asleep, no hovering at the edges for him. 

It takes a moment for him to determine where he is. Slowly, the room comes into focus, and he sags back to the bed with relief. Baker Street. He’s in his room, his own bed, for the first time since he shot Magnussen in the head. How long ago was this? Days, weeks? He can’t tell right now, and it’s a little frightening; normally he is perfectly oriented in space and time. But he has no idea what time it is, or what day, or month, or even year. It was Christmas when he shot Magnussen, today could be New Year’s Day, for all he knows. 

Slowly, carefully, he takes stock of his physical state. Somebody had pulled his shoes off and removed his jacket before depositing him on the bed in his pants and shirtsleeves. His head hurts. There’s an IV line on his left arm, leading to two empty IV bags over his bed. The labels point to saline solution and glucose, which tell him two things: One, he’s been unconscious for a while, and two, John is here. 

That last one fills him with a warmth he can now easily attribute to the remnants of the drug cocktail he shot himself up with to figure out whether Moriarty was still alive. The results were satisfyingly conclusive, but if he’s honest with himself he isn’t entirely sure it was worth the effort. He’s already given Moriarty too much of his attention, too much room.

He slowly sits up, which takes a not inconsiderable amount of effort, and methodically detaches the IV line from his arm before making his way to the bathroom.

For a moment, he catches his reflection in the mirror as he washes his face. He looks like a ghost, even more than he normally does. He combs a hand through his hair and decides he might as well try for a shower. 

“Bad idea,” John says from behind him and Sherlock starts violently, turning around, cursing the remainders of the drugs in his system still clouding his senses so much that he didn’t hear John approaching. John is leaning in the open bathroom door, clad in pajamas and an ancient robe. Some of his things are still in his room upstairs, Sherlock deduces, he hasn’t had time over the last few days to move everything back to the house. So Sherlock hasn’t been gone for long.

“I need to wash up,” Sherlock says, gesturing at the shower. His voice sounds terrible, rough and dry. 

John shakes his head. “Nope. Back to bed. Your blood pressure will thank me.”

Sherlock would like to argue, really, but he feels weak as a kitten, plus John has his determined face on, so he just lets himself be led back to bed, and all but tucked into the sheets. 

John smiles at him, fondly, wearily. “Go back to sleep.”

Sherlock grabs John’s hand to stop him from leaving. “What time is it?” he asks, voice still gravelly from lack of use. 

“A little after 2 am,” John says, gently disentangling himself from Sherlock’s grasp. “I’ll get you a glass of water.”

John leaves and promptly returns, and Sherlock is embarrassed how relieved he is when John switches on the bedside lamp and helps him drink the water, when he sits down on the edge of Sherlock’s bed once the glass is empty. “How do you feel?” John asks, and by the way he scrutinises Sherlock, he seems to know the answer.

“Terrific,” Sherlock lies. 

John smirks humorlessly. “Good to know that an overdose turns you into a terrible liar, normally you’re so good at it.”

“It wasn’t an overdose, it was a controlled experience,” Sherlock corrects.

John looks at him with a mixture of tired anger, exasperation and amusement. “What day is it, Sherlock?”

“The day you’re asking stupid questions, so it could literally be any day of the week or year,” Sherlock answers immediately, he’s been down this road before, after all.

John rolls his eyes and doesn’t rise to the bait, which means he’s either very tired or very angry or both. Slowly, he takes something from Sherlock’s nightstand. 

“You know what this is?” John asks, holding the contraption into the light, and Sherlock recognises it immediately, of course. It’s a nasal spray that’s used as first aid for opioid overdoses, and Sherlock’s seen it once too often for his taste. “I bought this after I moved into 221B five years ago. It’s now expired. Please tell me I don’t have to buy a new one.”

Sherlock snorts. “Don’t be overdramatic, John. You didn’t need it, I was fine.”

“You passed out two minutes after we left the airfield, Sherlock. You’ve been out for over 36 hours. You think I put in an IV line for the fun of it?” John gestures at the IV bags. “So I don’t know if you were trying to kill yourself and failed, or if you thought you were taking a calculated risk and were okay with that outcome, but it was still incredibly, actively, forcefully stupid!”

John’s angry, Sherlock can tell, and it shouldn’t make Sherlock happy, but it does, in an odd way. John wouldn’t be angry if he didn’t care. John is here, now, with Sherlock, not with his wife, here. And even though Sherlock has done his damnedest to make sure John goes back to Mary, he can’t help but feel this entirely stupid, self-indulgent warmth. After all, John Watson is ranting at him, tired and angry and half-sick with worry. A short while ago he thought he’d never have that again. So he just shrugs and turns his head away a little so John won’t see him smile.

For a few moments, silence falls, and Sherlock drifts pleasantly on the edges of sleep.

“Sherlock, look at me,” John says, finally, gently. 

Sherlock turns his head and looks at John, who’s looking back at him intently, worry lines prominent on his forehead. John swallows, and his fingers tighten on Sherlock’s arm. Some powerful emotion is wrestling for dominance over his features. Sadness, tiredness, anger, love. Or maybe Sherlock’s just projecting, because that’s how he feels right now.

“Don’t do this to me, all right?” John says quietly, holding Sherlock’s gaze. “Don’t check out and leave me alone in this mess, all right? Hell, Sherlock, I’m going to have a daughter, and I need you around to help me put the fear of God into her future boyfriends, all right? Whatever you tried to do with that stupid drug trip, it’s not worth it. Moriarty isn’t worth it, he wasn’t worth it the first time, he isn’t worth it now. I can’t…” John’s voice breaks a little, and he continues in a near whisper, “I can’t do this alone. Any of this.”

Sherlock swallows, at a loss for words. Then, silently, he nods, brings his hand over John’s gripping his arm, squeezes his fingers. “Me neither,” he admits, and he’s a little surprised how easily the words come. Another piece of him just handed over to John Watson, to do with as he pleases.

Fortunately, most of the time, John is exceptionally careful with Sherlock’s heart.

John sighs deeply, tired and looking sad and a bit lost. “This is my last night here. I promised Mary I’d move back in tomorrow.”

_Don’t leave. Don’t go. Stay. Longer. Forever._

Sherlock swallows the words down and ignores how much he enjoyed having John around again at 221B for his recovery. The last four months have been difficult, but without John Sherlock knows he would have never been able to get past the morphine withdrawal and he would have neglected his physical therapy even more than he already did. “Thank you,” he says, and John looks at him, confused. “For the… you know.” He gestures at his chest, where the small scar is still red and angry under his shirt.

“Idiot,” John mutters fondly. The bed dips a bit, and Sherlock is half afraid that John will leave, but John just lies down next to him and switches off the bedside lamp.   
“Sherlock?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Magnussen.”

“Oh. Well. You’re welcome.”

There’s a pause, and John rolls to his side and looks at Sherlock, then he says quietly, “But you shouldn’t have done it.”

Sherlock rolls to face John. They aren’t touching, but Sherlock can still feel the warmth of John next to him, and he knows he won’t wash these sheets for far too long because they’ll still smell like John. John looks tired, more than anything. Tired, and sad. Unhappy.

“Magnussen deserved to die,” Sherlock points out. _I would have killed him for the face-flicking alone,_ Sherlock adds silently.

John sighs. “I’m not disputing that. I’m just... “ He pauses, obviously thinking about how to phrase whatever he wants to say. “Don’t…” He interrupts himself again, rubs a tired hand over his face. “I’m not sure it was worth it. Worth the consequences.”

“It was worth it,” Sherlock says with utter conviction, and once again swallows what he wants to say, which is _You’re worth it_. 

“I hope you’re right,” John says, the worry lines still between his eyes.

“I’m always right, haven’t you noticed?”

It startles a laugh out of John, which was the reaction Sherlock was going for.

“Of course, I’m sorry. How could I forget.”

Sherlock smiles at the amusement in John’s voice, and not for the first time, he wishes he could freeze this moment and live within it, John here, at 221B, smiling at Sherlock’s bad joke, and for once he gets his wish, because he falls asleep like this, peacefully, with John by his side and wholly his for one more night.


	12. Marriage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set near the end of TST

By the time their cab pulls up in front of the house, it’s well past midnight.

Neither of them has spoken a word since the cab dropped off Sherlock in Baker Street. 

John is tired and still a bit nauseous from their extremely bumpy flight from Marrakech, and all he wants is a cup of tea and a good night’s sleep.

The cab stops and Mary pays. John gets out and takes a deep breath of the cool night air. It was pleasantly warm in Morocco. That’s the only positive thing he can say about the trip.

He takes a look around the quiet street. It’s a foggy night, and the mist turns the streetlights into otherworldly glow-globes, the halo of water droplets glistening in the dim warmth of the lamps. 

Nothing moves. But he can briefly see the glimmer of a mobile phone screen lighting up. Mycroft’s people are still watching the house, then. 

He picks up his bag and turns to Mary, who’s watching him warily, silently. She hasn’t said much since they caught up with her. John doesn’t blame her. There doesn’t seem much to say.

He unlocks the door and steps through first. 

“John?” 

Molly pads out of the guest room in socked feet, wrapped in a fluffy blanket. She smiles at him and hugs him, and John rests his head on her shoulder for a second, letting himself be comforted by her uncomplicated affection.

“Rosie’s asleep?” he asks, letting her go.

She nods. “She was an angel. Dropped off over her bottle around eight and I haven’t heard a peep from her since.”

“Thank you for watching her,” Mary says from the door, still standing in the hallway, bag at her feet like a guest who hasn’t been asked to come in yet.

Molly nods at her cooly. She’s never warmed to Mary, and John wonders why he didn’t take that as the warning sign it very clearly was. “No problem.”

“Go back to sleep,” John says gently. “I’ll get her if she needs anything.”

Molly hands over the baby monitor and vanishes into the guest room with a last significant look at Mary and an affectionate squeeze of John’s elbow.

John takes the baby monitor and goes into the kitchen. Mary follows. 

Without consciously thinking about it, John fixes two cups of tea. He turns and hands Mary hers, then sits down at the kitchen table. Mary sits opposite.

The ticking of the wall clock is surprisingly loud in the stony silence. He looks at Mary sitting there, blonde hair in a messy bun, and thinks that she looks tired, and sad, and defeated, and like a complete stranger. It’s oddly dissociative, like becoming aware of one’s own heartbeat, or feeling oneself fall asleep, the way one realises that it’s impossible to ever really know anyone, that of the thousands of thoughts passing through a person’s head, one will ever only really know a very small increment. 

The silence is thick, and deafening, and slightly awkward. Surely there must be something to say. But John feels somehow beyond words with this woman he seems to barely know, who is the mother of his child and his wife. 

Mary sips her tea and grimaces a bit at the taste, but she doesn’t say anything. 

John rubs a hand over his face and yawns. “I need to get some sleep.”

Of course the moment he’s uttered that sentence Rosie starts crying. 

“I’ll get her,” Mary says, almost eagerly, and darts out of the room.

John gets up and prepares a bottle with as little conscious thought as he gave the tea. He goes after Mary into Rosie’s room and catches Mary unbuttoning her shirt, as if she’s were ready to breast-feed Rosie. “Don’t,” he says before he can think better of it. “I just got her used to the bottle, I’ve got no intention of going through that again the next time you…” he stops himself just in time, but he can see that Mary understood him perfectly. 

He thinks briefly about apologising, but from the stricken expression on Mary’s face, he knows it’s pointless. So he hands her the bottle and goes back into the kitchen to finish his tea. 

Fifteen minutes pass, and John’s tea goes cold, before Mary returns. She sets the empty bottle down next to the sink and retakes her chair opposite John.

“I wonder,” she says, in that way she has, where she sounds cool and detached but is actually angry. “Why did you come after me, if you don’t think I’ll stay?”

John shrugs and rubs a hand over his face. Right now, he has no idea why he did any of the things he’s done over the last year and a half. “Guess I wanted to give our daughter an outside chance of remembering your face,” he finally says, because that’s as good a reason as any. 

“Or did you just follow Sherlock the way you usually do?” 

John is too tired to lie. Or to sugarcoat this in any way. “Possibly. Maybe Sherlock wanted to give our daughter an outside chance of remembering your face.”

Mary snorts. It’s an ugly sound, devoid of humor. “Like Sherlock cares about Rosie.”

“He cares a hell of a lot more than you did when you just abandoned us,” John points out, and finally, finally, he seems to come out of this strange, numb detachment, but all he feels is anger. 

“You think that was easy for me? Leaving Rosie behind?” Mary looks at him, and there’s genuine hurt in her voice. 

“How am I supposed to know? You’ve lied to me so many times, about so many things, I have no idea how you really feel about anything,” John snaps, and he feels an odd sort of satisfaction when Mary winces.

“I never lied about how I feel about you. Or Rosie,” she says quietly, looking down at her hands. “Can you say the same?”

“What are you even talking about? I never lied to you about anything.”

Mary smiles sadly. “Maybe that’s true. Maybe you’re just so used to lying to yourself that you can’t even see the truth anymore.” She pauses and takes a sip of her tea, then grimaces again and pushes it away. “I wonder, did you ever really see me, as I really am, or just the way you wanted me to be in your loneliness and grief? And the second I stopped playing into your fantasy of who I was, you lost all interest in me. ”

“Come off it,” John snaps. “Don’t play the victim here. You shot my best friend through the chest. What did you expect, a thank you note? Flowers?”

“And before that everything was good, right? You were happy, content, not at all restless and bored and strung out, right? I thought you forgave me. I thought we were starting new,” Mary says, and there’s a tired sadness in her voice that John can deeply empathise with. 

John doesn’t answer for a moment, staring into his tea, thinking of that Christmas Day at Sherlock’s parents’, and Magnussen, and that bloody plane, and how all the while he had felt like there was a weight pressing down on him, and another pressing up, and that he was going to be crushed in-between. The rock and the hard place. Forgive his wife, try to make a family with her, with Rosie. Or not forgive her, and take the risk of her just vanishing into thin air, taking his daughter with her. 

“How do you forgive something like that?” he asks, looking back up at Mary. “Really, deep down? How do you come back from something like that?”

She sighs, and he can see the anger seep out of her, slowly, leaving an exhaustion behind he’s deeply familiar with. “I don’t know. How did you forgive Sherlock?”

John looks down at his hands holding his mug. He has the ridiculous impulse to smash it. He doesn’t, of course, but he imagines it for a second. What it would feel like. The noise it would make. The shards pressing into his fingers. He’d welcome the pain right now. “I’m not sure I have, completely,” he finally says, and it surprises him, these words, spoken from a part of him that’s just too bloody tired to pretend. “I mean, I understood why he did it. And I believe he’s sorry. I suppose that’s the difference.”

“I _am_ sorry I shot him,” Mary says quietly, matching her tone to John’s. “But I don’t know how to prove it to you. And I don’t know where we can go from here. I want to try to fix this, John.”

John sighs and tries to feel anything other than exhaustion. He fails. “Let’s talk about this in the morning. We both need to sleep.”

Mary gives an almost imperceptible nod. “I’ll take the sofa. You can have the bed.”

“Fine.” He gets up and pauses in the doorway, looking back at her, sitting in their kitchen, woolen cardigan wrapped around her against the cool night air. “Mary.”

She looks up. He gives her a small smile that’s more a grimace, but she smiles back, her posture relaxing somewhat. “We can fix this,” he says, and even as he speaks the words he knows they’re a lie. He will never trust her again, and at the first sign of trouble, she’ll run. 

And he knows for a fact that next time, he won’t go after her again.


	13. Nadir

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically the reason I wrote this fic. I was deeply unsatisfied with the end of TST and couldn't even bring myself to watch TLD and the rest of the mess that was S4, because I felt it was just so deeply out of character for John. So from here on, we go AU from canon, TLD and TFP never happened. Also, like the title says, this is the low point of the story, from now on we move into happier territory ;-)

The thirty-eight hours after Mary Watson’s funeral are the worst of Sherlock’s life. Worse than Serbia. Worse than getting shot. Worse than having to leave a grieving John behind. Worse than the time his mum was in the hospital and he was afraid she would die. 

There is no objective reason for this. Yet he still feels like somebody has removed his very center of gravity and everything is floating, unreal, adrift. Nothing is as it was before. Nothing will ever be as it was before. 

John Watson is no longer his friend.

He was never entirely sure if friend was the right word for what John is to him. It’s taken him a while, but he had to finally admit that he does have more than one friend in the world. There’s Lestrade, and Molly, and Mrs Hudson, and ironically, there was Mary Watson with whom he had one thing in common that nobody else in the world shared: Keeping John and Rosie Watson safe and happy as a number one priority. They might not have seen eye to eye on the methods, or the execution, but at least they agreed on the importance of the issue.

Sherlock is fond of Molly, and Lestrade, and he unabashedly loves Mrs Hudson, even though he wouldn’t admit it under torture. 

But John… nothing of what he feels for John is anything like what he feels for Molly, or Lestrade, or Mrs Hudson. For one thing, he misses John very much when he isn’t around, and he can go literal years without seeing any of his other friends without feeling that hollow longing feeling he had when he was away. Also, he never much cared what they thought of him, and sometimes he feels like his entire self-worth is based on what John thinks about him. Objectively, he doesn’t see why that should be so, because John is neither especially perceptive nor extraordinarily clever.

And yet. 

And yet, ever since he met John, Sherlock’s self-perception has been filtered through the eyes of John Watson, for the simple reason that whatever else was going on, Sherlock was sure that John cared for Sherlock in a way that other people never have. John saw something in Sherlock worth loving. Even when he came back, Sherlock knew that John was angry because he loved Sherlock. Now, for the first time, that certainty is shaken. And the absence of that bedrock has shaken Sherlock to the core. It shouldn’t have, rationally. But it did. 

It’s the middle of the night, and it’s been ten days since he’s last spoken to John. His calls go to voicemail, his texts go unanswered. The blog is gone. The email has been deleted. 

He can’t remember the last time he slept more than two hours at a time. Or the last time he had a decent meal, showered, washed his hair, made tea, had an entire glass of water.

He's dozing fitfully in his chair when his phone rings. 

That in itself is such a rare occasion - everyone knows he prefers to text - that he jolts awake, heart beating, adrenaline biting into his sore muscles. 

He reaches for the phone, checking the caller ID. 

John. 

Sherlock picks up, glad that nobody can see how much his hands are shaking with exhaustion and nerves. "John."

Silence. He can hear John breathing. 

Sherlock stays quiet, waiting for John to decide whether he wants to speak, sick with hope and apprehension. 

Finally, John sighs heavily into the phone. "I… I can't…" 

John sounds horrible. He sounds like he's in pain, actual physical pain. Sherlock is out of his chair and in his coat and shoes in two minutes flat. "I'll be there in 20 minutes."

A short pause. Sherlock half expects John to tell him not to come. 

"Thank you," John says, and Sherlock is almost sick with relief and worry. 

"Of course. I'll be right there." 

The taxi ride takes the longest 17 minutes and 33 seconds of his life. 

He has no idea what to expect when he arrives. He lets himself into John's house with his spare key - that he isn't even supposed to have anymore - and calls out John's name quietly, hoping to not wake Rosie. 

"In here," John answers just as quietly, and Sherlock follows his voice to the sitting room. 

The lights are off, so he has only the soft glow of street lamps filtering through the lacy curtains to see by. He can make out John in an armchair by the window, a sleeping Rosie lying sprawled over his lap, her head resting in the crook of his arm. An empty formula bottle is lying on the floor next to the chair. Toys and empty mugs and plates are scattered around the room. The air is stale; it smells of formula, dust, old sweat and baby wipes.

Sherlock slowly comes closer, and finally dares to raise his eyes to John’s face. John is watching him warily, and he looks terrible. His clothes are disarrayed, and he looks like he hasn’t shaved or showered in some time. His eyes are red-rimmed and he has dark circles under them. 

They just look at each other in silence for a few minutes, taking in the respective ravaged state of the other. When their eyes meet, Sherlock is sure they’re thinking the same thing once more. _How have we come to this?_

Finally, after what seems like an eternity, John says, “I can’t get up.” His voice sounds hoarse with exhaustion and disuse. At Sherlock’s questioning frown, he gestures at his legs. “My leg. It hurts.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your leg,” Sherlock says automatically, and then curses himself for an idiot, because John knows this, and pointing out the obvious is not helping. On the contrary, it will only make John defensive.

John snorts, a harsh unamused sound. “No, it’s my head that’s fucked up. Doesn’t change the fact that if I get up right now, I’ll fall flat on my face, and as much as I might deserve it, my daughter doesn’t.”

“I’ll take her,” Sherlock says immediately, glad to have something concrete to do, relieved beyond measure as John hands her over without protest, then slumps back in his chair with obvious relief. 

She half-wakes for a moment, but then she just snuggles back against him, so small, so trusting, and falls back asleep.

He takes his time getting her back into her crib. She wakes again when he puts her down, and this time she isn’t so easily placated, so he takes her out, changes her, then carries her around a bit.

“Calm down, Watson, it’s going to be alright,” he mutters into her hair, and slowly she settles again. He clings to her a bit longer, her small, warm body, her baby-smell, and he’s shocked to discover that he’s missed her, nearly as much as he’s missed John. Maybe more, because she loves him with an easy, uncomplicated self-evidence that is hard to replicate with a grown-up. She only knows that he’s a warm, familiar body who’s been there for most of her short life, and he takes as much comfort from her instinctive trust as he gives her. 

She doesn’t yet know of the many ways in which he has failed her, failed her father, failed her mother, failed as a person and as a detective. She doesn’t know yet that he’s broken his vow, that he allowed her mother to die. 

Sherlock clings to Rosie as a quiet sob racks his frame, as something ugly and complicated takes him by the neck and wrings a sound out of him, something that’s part grief, part guilt, part purely selfish fear that he’s lost the only family he cares about having. 

Finally, she is calm and he is calm and he can put her back in her crib. He switches on the baby monitor and takes another look at her peaceful face. 

Then he goes to deal with the other Watson, and he’s very much afraid that a few pats on the back and some gentle rocking won’t be enough in this case.

First things first. Tea.

He goes into the kitchen and makes tea without switching the lights on. He hasn’t been here that often, but this is John’s kitchen, so he knows where everything is.

Then he takes the two mugs into the sitting room and hands one to John. John takes it with a nod of thanks. 

Sherlock takes his tea to the sofa, sits down and waits. He isn’t entirely sure for what.

When the silence becomes too much to bear, Sherlock finally asks, “Why did you call me?”

For a moment, he doesn’t think John will answer. Then he says, and he sounds so defeated that Sherlock is sorry he asked, “Because I’m too fucking tired to care.”

The words sting, and Sherlock is asking himself whether he should just leave, when John speaks again. “My therapist says I’m angry with you because I’m really angry with Mary, and you’re a convenient target because you’re still around and she isn’t.” 

“Is she right?” Sherlock asks, too exhausted to tiptoe around. 

“Partly, I suppose,” John muses, and Sherlock’s eyes snap to him, because he didn’t actually think John was going to admit to anything of the sort. “I’m so angry with Mary I could fill a football stadium with it.” He looks at Sherlock like the sight of him is physically painful to him, and Sherlock just wants to get up and go. He can’t, though, because this is the first time John has spoken to him, words that matter, since Mary died, and he feels trapped between hope and fear, and he doesn’t know which feels worse. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not angry with you as well.”

Sherlock doesn’t know what to say to that, so he decides to change the subject. “John, you’re exhausted. You need to get some sleep.”

“I can’t,” John sighs, and Sherlock hears a despair there he’s acutely familiar with, the desperation of the exhausted for whom rest is an unobtainable illusion. “Every time I close my eyes, I see all the people I’ve had to watch dying.” He looks down at the floor. “Every time it starts with my mum, and then goes on, and on, all the people I couldn’t save. Soldiers. And Mary. And you. When you jumped. And when Mary shot you and you almost died on the table. They let me watch from the observation room, did you know that?”

Sherlock shakes his head, but John doesn’t see, he just continues, “And every time I wake up I’m not sure if it’s you or her who died, and then I remember it’s her, and I’m _relieved_ , and then I fucking _hate_ myself for being relieved.”

There are too many emotions choking Sherlock’s throat to name. His own grief for Mary is so complicated that it would take days to unravel. There’s guilt there, and pure, ice-cold hatred, and love, too, because she was Rosie’s mum, wasn’t she, and there’s a sort of kinship he felt with her. But he also knows that the extremely tentative equilibrium they’d reached after she shot him would never have lasted, that something had to give or something would break. Well, something gave, and something broke anyway. The one thing they had both agreed should not break. John. So in a way, he feels like he and Mary both failed John, deeply and profoundly. 

“I would have taken that bullet for her if I’d had the chance,” Sherlock says.

“Sherlock,” John says, and there’s something in his voice that’s almost… gentle, almost… like it was before, like so often when he’d say Sherlock’s name and it was almost an endearment. Sherlock’s eyes snap to John’s, and John says, quietly, “And how would that have been better?”

“Your wife would still be alive,” Sherlock says, astonished that his voice works.

John looks away again, hand rubbing at the phantom ache in his leg, an automatic, unconscious gesture. “Don’t for a moment think that I don’t know what you were trying to do in that aquarium.” His voice is quiet and harsh and angry. “You knew she was going to get violent, and you drew her attention so she’d shoot you and nobody else.”

Sherlock shrugs, because yes, he did, and he’d do it again. 

John rubs a hand over his face and sighs. “Sherlock, you have to stop this. How many times are you going to throw your life away for me?” He looks up, and there’s something in his eyes, something deep and dark and real. “I’m not bloody worth it, Sherlock. I was never bloody worth it.”

“Of course you are,” Sherlock answers, shocked into speaking. “How can you even say that?”

“I’ve made so many mistakes, I don’t even know where to start. Did you know I almost cheated on Mary?”

“What? When?” Sherlock asks, because it’s the first he’s heard of it. “Who was it?”

John shrugs. “It was just a random woman I met on the bus. It wasn’t even important. I just…” he sighs, looks down at his hands as if they’re not even a part of his body. “I was bored.” Then he shakes his head. “No. That’s not it. I was lonely. Unhappy. Stuck.”

“So you were looking for a way out?” Sherlock asks gently, and wonders, _Why didn’t you come to me with any of this?_

“I don’t even know, to be honest. I was… I never should have gone back to her.”

“She was pregnant,” Sherlock points out, for the ten thousandth time, and it annoys him that he has to talk John into forgiving Mary even now that she’s dead. 

“I don’t care,” John says, and there’s blood-red, vicious anger in his voice, the likes of which Sherlock has only ever heard once before, when Mary died and John turned on him. “She _lied_ to me, Sherlock. About everything. Why is it that people always lie to me? I’m so bloody sick of it. Why do the people I love never _trust_ me with the truth?”

Sherlock flinches, because he knows down to his bones that John isn’t only talking about Mary. Now they’re talking about the many ways, big and small, he has lied to John over the years. “I only ever wanted to protect you,” Sherlock says, and even as the words are out of his mouth he knows it’s another lie. He can’t even count the number of times he’s lied to John because it was easier, because he was lazy and didn’t feel like explaining, because he wanted to be dramatic.

“It’s not your bloody job to protect me, for fuck’s sake,” John growls. “I’m a grown man, I can make my own bloody decisions. I have a mind of my own, I am a person of my own, I’m not a fucking pawn. You only ever tell me half of what’s going on. You don’t tell me you’re going to drug my pregnant wife, you don’t tell me you plan to murder my wife’s supposed blackmailer, you _make me watch you jump off a fucking building_.”

_There it is,_ Sherlock thinks. _The Original Sin._

Sherlock knows that they wouldn’t be sitting here if he hadn’t jumped. He _knows_ , deep down in his bones, that John wouldn’t have married Mary, that she would have been as transient a figure as any of his other girlfriends, that right now, at this very moment, they would both be asleep in their respective beds in 221B, and now Sherlock wishes for this alternate reality so much his entire body hurts with it. 

But he went and did something that broke something essential in John, between them. Trust. John trusted Sherlock with his life and with his heart, and Sherlock smashed the latter to save the former, and he’s still atoning for it.

“I’ve tried to make up for it,” Sherlock says, hating the catch in his voice. “But I failed.”

There’s a long silence, and finally Sherlock looks up to see John watching him with an unreadable expression. “How did you fail?” he asks finally, and his voice isn’t any steadier than Sherlock’s. 

“I broke my vow,” Sherlock whispers, unable to look away from John’s face, which does something complicated, and for a moment, Sherlock thinks that John is going to cry.

And then he does. “No, you bloody well didn’t,” he sobs, and Sherlock is across the room before he even knows what he’s doing. He’s on his knees in front of John’s chair, and John’s head is on his shoulder, and his hands are rubbing John’s back, and he feels John’s wracking, ugly sobs shudder through his entire body. He closes his eyes and pretends not to enjoy this, all this closeness and touch and body heat. He is so very tired of pretending.

After what seems like hours but is probably only a few minutes, John pulls himself together. He rights himself and looks at Sherlock intently, grabbing his shoulders. “Listen to me. Please. You didn’t fail. You didn’t break your vow. You were ready to take a bullet that belonged to my wife, and she _chose_ to take it. And I want you to understand that it was _never_ your bloody job to take that bullet in the first place. Not for her. And sure as fucking hell not for me. For nobody. I don’t want you to throw your life away for me. Not ever again. All right?”

Sherlock is too overwhelmed to speak. He wants to say that he would die for John a million times in a heartbeat, simply because it would be easier than living with knowing he could have prevented John’s death. He wants to say that if only one of them can live, he will always, always pick John, always. He wants to lie and say, all right. I promise. But the one thing he can do for John is stop lying to him. Because John is right, this _has to_ stop. Now. “I want to tell you what you want to hear. But you’re right, you deserve the truth. You deserved it from Mary, and you deserve it from me. And the truth is, I will always choose your life over mine, and if I may remind you, it was you who grabbed Moriarty and told me to run, so you need to ask yourself where I get it from.”

John’s startled laugh is surprising but welcome. He looks at Sherlock, and Sherlock knows that they’re going to be alright. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not for a long time. But eventually. And something passes between their eyes, unspoken like the best of their moments, and in that moment he knows John knows too.

"I lied before," John says quietly. "I didn't call you because I was too tired to care. I called you because I needed help and I knew you would come." 

"Always," Sherlock whispers. 

John sighs and gives him a tired half-smile. “I need to try to get some sleep. And you as well. I won’t even ask when you last got a good night’s sleep, because I can see it’s been too bloody long. Help me get out of this chair?”

Sherlock gets up and holds out his hands, and John grasps them and pulls himself up. When they just stand there, hands clasped, Sherlock is oddly reminded of how he taught John to dance, John’s hand sweaty in his, John’s insecure little laugh, the way he bit his lip in concentration, unaware that Sherlock’s heart was hammering out of his chest two feet away from his own.

John nods at him and Sherlock lets go. Slowly, but steadily, John walks across the room towards the door. Then he turns. “Bit late to go back. The bed’s made in the guest room. So you can. You know. Stay. If you want to.”

It’s very obvious that John wants him to stay and this is the closest he can get to saying it. Sherlock nods, trying to hide his desperate relief. “Thank you.”

John nods at him, and it takes the world’s only consulting detective - and his best friend - to see the miniscule amount of tension going out of John’s body. John gives him a small smile that’s more of a grimace, really. “Good night, then,” he says, and turns without another word and vanishes into the bedroom.

Sherlock walks to the guest room on autopilot, and collapses on the bed. He closes his eyes and thinks, _I have to find another word than friend, a new one. A better one._

Then he sleeps dreamlessly until morning.


	14. Home

John startles awake, disoriented for a moment, unsure where he is or what time it is.

Then he remembers. He’s on the sofa in 221B, and it’s somewhere between sunset and dawn, probably closer to dawn.

The room is dark and quiet, but the kitchen light over the sink is on, and he can just make out Sherlock’s silhouette bent over the microscope in the kitchen.

He closes his eyes and lets himself sink into a deep sense of wellbeing as the familiar smells and sounds of 221B saturate him with contentment. In moments like this, between sleeping and waking, he can admit to himself that this place feels like home to him in a way that other places he’s lived in just never have. His childhood home was unpredictable, depending on his dad’s mood and state of sobriety and his mum’s state of health. He remembers feeling content there as well, but the place didn’t wrap around him like a soothing cocoon the way 221B does. 

Mrs Hudson’s Big Ben clock strikes the half hour. Sherlock rummages around in the kitchen. Rosie sighs in her sleep over the baby monitor.

John thinks hard about turning around and going back to sleep.

But they’re in the middle of a case, and John was supposed to re-read the autopsy reports and fell asleep with them on his chest. 

Someone removed them and stacked them neatly on the end table. John guesses it’s the same someone who turned off the light and covered him with an ancient but extremely comfortable blanket. 

John smiles. Sherlock’s a little more overt with his mother-henning since he came back from the dead, but he’s still most incautious with simple kindnesses when John is asleep.

He gets up and puts the blanket aside, then goes into the kitchen on quiet stockinged feet to get some water.

Sherlock briefly looks up from the microscope, then re-focuses on his work. John drains a glass of water and puts another down next to Sherlock.

It’s very quiet in the flat. 

“Anything?” John asks, keeping his voice low the way people sometimes do at night when everything is silent and they don’t want to disturb any ghosts.

Sherlock shakes his head. “Go back to sleep.”

John glances in the direction of the stairs, thinking that he’d better check on Rosie.

“Watson is fine, I checked on her 20 minutes ago.”

John smiles into his glass of water. “I’m going to re-read the autopsy reports, maybe I’ve missed something.”

“You didn’t,” Sherlock says, not looking up from his microscope, tone steady and deeply sure. “You never do. Go back to sleep.”

Something twists in John’s chest. Something deep and fond and quiet, something that’s been there so many years that sometimes John forgets about it. Something that says, _Touch him, just briefly, just the shoulder, just for a second, just a brush of fingers, he looks tired, has he eaten, has he slept, has he drunk enough water, make him eat and drink and sleep and take care of himself run after him into the dark and drag him out remember what it was like without him never again._

“What about you?” John asks, proud of himself for how steady his voice sounds when all he wants to do is step closer and rest his chin on Sherlock’s shoulder, nothing more, really, just touch him in any small way, tuck the sleeve of the dressing gown he’s wearing over his dress pants and still-crisp shirt. John sometimes wonders how Sherlock manages to always look like he just changed, when John mostly looks like he was just hugged by an overly-affectionate gorilla with sticky fingers. 

Then he notices the jam-crusted small handprint on Sherlock’s dressing gown and a small laugh escapes him. 

Sherlock looks up at John and raises a questioning eyebrow. “What’s funny?”

John gestures at the handprint and Sherlock smiles as well, and John thinks how different Sherlock is from the man John met so many years ago, who would have thought it the height of weakness to be fondly amused and more than a bit sentimental about a two-year-old’s jammy handprint. “Apricot,” Sherlock muses after a few moments of contemplation, and they both grin. 

“Thank god it’s not the blackberry, that stains like crazy. There’s a cushion on the sofa that’s still stained even though I washed it three times.”

Sherlock frowns at the sofa, and John shakes his head. “Not here, at…” _home_ he wants to say, but the word sticks in his throat, because it’s not true. ‘The house where most of my things are’ is a more accurate description, but it’s a bit unwieldy. So John makes a vague gesture in the general direction of where he thinks his current place of legal residence is and leaves it to Sherlock to fill in the blanks.

“Ah,” Sherlock says, very much noncommittal, and turns his attention back to the microscope. Or it would seem so to anyone who doesn’t know him as well as John does, because John knows that Sherlock might _look_ at the microscope, but his attention is still very much on John.

It strikes John again how different Sherlock is. Even a year ago, he would have come right out and said whatever he’s thinking, but he’s learned to be cautious. And as nice as it is that Sherlock has learned a bit of tact, a part of John hates that caution because it shows him that there’s still something between them that’s not completely back to the way it was. Sherlock always spoke his unfiltered thoughts to John because he knew John wouldn’t judge him for them and wouldn’t think any less of him, love him any less. Somewhere between Mary and Magnussen and all that endless nightmare of a year between Mary shooting Sherlock and Mary dying and them finally managing to put both those things behind them, that certainty was lost. The last year was good, mostly. John’s back in therapy, there have been cases and adventures and quiet times with Rosie and without her, and slowly, very slowly, they’ve reached a sort of equilibrium again. But they’re not quite there yet.

“Sherlock,” John says gently, and Sherlock looks up from the microscope again, caution in every line of his body. “Say it.”

Sherlock looks down at the floor, and John can see the deep uncertainty, and he hates it.

“Say what you’re thinking,” John says, even more gently. “Unfiltered. Please.”

Sherlock’s eyes snap up to John’s face, as if gauging his sincerity, and apparently he’s satisfied with what he finds there, because he says, “It’s idiotic to keep a house you don’t like.”

“Who says I don’t like it?” John counters automatically, but only winces when Sherlock gives him a _how stupid do you think I am_ look. He concedes the point with a shrug, and John can see Sherlock’s relief in his smug smile. 

John sighs and rubs a hand over his face, looking down at his water glass as if it held any answers. The truth is, he’s never liked the house very much. It’s far away - which he realises now was sort of the point of it, Mary wanted to wean him from 221B by making it thoroughly inconvenient to reach - it’s too big for two people, too expensive, too much for a single dad to clean and keep up. 

It occurs to John that he can’t accurately remember when he was last at the house. The last few days were so busy with the case that he just came right here after work, and Sherlock has been picking up Rosie from kindergarten for the last two weeks at least.

“Sunday,” Sherlock says, gently, quietly. “You went by to pick up Watson’s Wellingtons.”

John smiles to himself and shakes his head. “Sometimes I think you’re actually psychic, you know.”

“Boring,” Sherlock says and John laughs outright, looking up to meet Sherlock’s questioning gaze.

“So what you’re saying is I should sell a house I never use and don’t like anyway?” 

Sherlock snorts. “Obviously.”

John’s silent for a moment, and the amusement between them fades a bit. “And then what?” John asks quietly, because he knows what he wants, but he realises that he can’t assume that Sherlock is fine with him moving back in with a two-year-old because they’ve been crashing here uninvited.

Sherlock hesitates for a moment that would have been imperceptible for anyone but John, then he says, gently, “John. Is there any logical, rational reason you can think of why that room upstairs is still empty?”

John can feel the smile tug at his lips even as the thing in his chest twists, hard. “No.”

Sherlock nods as if that settles anything and goes back to his microscope. 

John opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again when he realises that Sherlock is right. There’s nothing more to say. 221B is home, and that room upstairs is his. It’s where he belongs.

“I knew it!” Sherlock suddenly yells, and John almost jumps out of his skin.

Sherlock jumps up and grabs John by the shoulders. “Yellow paint, John. The brother!”

John has no idea what Sherlock’s talking about, but he grins anyway, because he knows that Sherlock just solved the case, and in a moment, they’ll be out of the door, with the baby monitor safely with Mrs Hudson, and they’ll run into the darkness once more, and when the killer is caught, they’ll go home. Together.


	15. Family

“Daddy! Daddy!”

Sherlock goes from asleep to alert in 0.3 seconds and is out of the bed and up the stairs in less than two.

Rosie’s in tears, kneeling on John’s bed, shaking his shoulder. John is groggy with fever, and trying to calm her down while apparently doing his best to not be violently ill.

Sherlock picks up Rosie from the bed and hands John the waste paper basket in time for him to throw up into it.

“Come on, darling, let’s give Daddy some space,” he tells Rosie, who stopped crying when John started vomiting, and is looking at him with an almost academic fascination that Sherlock finds ridiculously endearing for the situation. 

“Daddy is sick, we can’t leave him alone,” Rosie says, still looking at John with the fearless curiosity that is her most Watson-ish trait. 

“Yes, Daddy is sick, but Daddy very much wants us to leave him alone. Say good night, darling.”

“Good night, Daddy,” Rosie says, and John acknowledges her with a little wave before collapsing back to the bed.

Sherlock carries Rosie down the stairs and right into his room, setting her down on his bed. “I think you’d better stay here tonight, Watson.”

Rosie snuggles under the bedsheets on what has slowly become her side of the bed. She doesn’t sleep here often, but often enough that one of her pillows has found its way into Sherlock’s bed, and there are a few of her books on the bedside table he never uses. 

“Sherlock?” 

“Go to sleep, Watson.”

She looks up at him, frowning, her unruly curls falling into her face. “Is Daddy going to be okay?”

He sits down on his side of the bed. “Yes, he’s going to be fine. He just caught the bug you had last week, remember? He’s going to feel bad for a few days, and then he’ll get better, just like you did.”

She hesitates for a moment, then she asks, so quietly he almost doesn’t catch it, “Was Mummy sick?”

Sherlock sighs and looks at his alarm clock. 1:12 am. Fantastic. The perfect time to tell a three-and-a-half-year-old her mother was murdered. “No, love. Mummy wasn’t sick.”

“Then why is she dead?” Rosie asks, clutching her beloved Piglet closer. 

“Mummy was hurt. A bad person hurt her, and she died,” Sherlock explains, or tries to, as gently as possible. Normally he hates talking down to Rosie or giving her anything but the unvarnished truth, but ‘Your mother was an assassin and got murdered by the woman who double crossed her’ isn’t something he can say to a three-year-old. 

“Tell me about Mummy,” Rosie mutters, halfway back to sleep. 

“Tomorrow,” Sherlock answers, keeping his voice quiet, soothing, rubbing her back, fervently hoping that by tomorrow morning, she’ll have forgotten about this line of inquiry. So far, she has shown little curiosity about her mother, and he fervently hopes it will stay this way until she’s old enough to understand some of the complexities involved. 

If it were up to him, he would never mention Mary ever again. He knows John feels similarly, and since Rosie has no memories of her mother, she wouldn’t think to ask on her own. But everybody always asks about Rosies’ mum, and Sherlock hates that, almost as much as John does. It’s not even that Mary’s death is so difficult to explain without going into a whole lot of things that nobody needs to know about. It’s the assumptions people make about how John feels about Mary’s death, and how Sherlock feels about it. They assume John is devastated and Sherlock is being noble by helping the poor widower raise his daughter. 

Sherlock isn’t being noble. Far from it. Sherlock is being purely, 100% self-servingly selfish by keeping the Watsons at Baker Street. He loves them being here, and if it were up to him, they would never leave.

And John isn’t a poor widower, and he isn’t devastated. Which isn’t to say that John didn’t and doesn’t mourn Mary, but Sherlock knows that his grief is too complex for anyone to understand who wasn’t right there with John through the whole entire mess. 

Sherlock listens to Rosie’s breaths even out, and when he’s sure she’s asleep, he goes into the bathroom for paracetamol, a glass of water, and the thermometer.

John’s door is ajar and the bedside lamp is on. Sherlock enters without knocking, and John only lifts his head a bit, then lets it drop back down onto the pillow. 

Sherlock sets down the water, thermometer and medicine on John’s nightstand and goes to empty out the waste paper basket into the loo. He cleans it out a bit and brings it back with him.

“Thank you,” John mutters without opening his eyes. He looks flushed and miserable. 

“I brought it back in case you’re ill again.”

“Should be okay now,” John says, opening his eyes to look at Sherlock. “Thanks for taking Rosie.”

Sherlock dismisses the thanks with a wave of his hand and grabs the thermometer. He puts it in John’s ear, and looks at it when it beeps. “38.6.”

John shrugs. “I’ve had worse.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes, and John smiles. It’s weak and miserable, but genuine. 

“Paracetamol?” Sherlock asks. 

John nods. Wordlessly, Sherlock helps him sit up and take the pills, holding the water glass for him.

John sinks back into his pillows with a relieved sigh and closes his eyes.

The room is quiet and cozy in the dim light of John’s bedside lamp. Rosie’s bed is sitting in a corner opposite John’s. Some toys are lying around; John’s beige jumper is thrown haphazardly over the armchair by the window. 

Sherlock loves this room. When John was living here alone, during the time he always thinks of as Before, he used to come up here and sit in the middle of the room on the floor, just soaking up the John Watson-ness of the room, deducing facts about John from his clothing, his aftershave, his shoes, the dearth of his personal belongings. 

John doesn’t cling. Not to things, and not to people. Most of the time, at least. He had next to nothing when Sherlock met him. No stuff, no people. No family. 

But John clings to 221B. And he clings to Sherlock. And Sherlock has often asked himself whether John has just replaced his cane with Sherlock as something to cling to, or if the reason John stays is an entirely different one. Maybe John needs Sherlock. But maybe he wants him, too. Maybe he is the bereft widower who uses 221B as a safe haven before he goes out on his own again. And maybe he’s here because he genuinely wants to be here and nowhere else. The fact that Sherlock still can’t answer that question with any certainty after nine years is disturbing, especially for the world’s only consulting detective. 

“Sherlock,” John says, quietly, and Sherlock realises that he’s been sitting at John’s bedside and staring at the bee stickers over Rosie’s bed for the last solid two and a half minutes. “What is it?”

“Rosie asked about Mary,” he says, because he doesn’t want to say what he’s really thinking, which is, _People think you need me, which is ridiculous hogwash. They never think that I need you, and it just proves how terminally stupid people are._

John does his best to shrug while moving as few muscles as possible. “We knew it would happen sooner or later.” His voice is rough and hoarse, and Sherlock helps him to drink a bit more water.

“What am I supposed to say?” Sherlock asks, because he honestly has no idea.

John opens his eyes and looks at him. His eyes are red-rimmed and feverish. He frowns and raises a slightly shaky hand to rub the space between his eyes. “I don’t know. Which is funny, because I’ve been preparing for this since Mary buggered off to Morocco, and I’ve got nothing. The thing is, I can’t even just tell Rosie all the ways she’s like Mary, because I’ve got no idea what she was really like, and what was just an act. Hell, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t even blonde. And anyway, Rosie’s already much more like you than she was ever going to be like Mary, and thank Christ for that.”

“How is she like me?” he asks, and fervently hopes that John is too out of it to notice that Sherlock can hardly speak around the lump in his throat.

John smiles at him, fondly amused. “On Tuesday, I asked her to clean her toys off the floor, and she said ‘Boring’ with your exact tone and inflection. And her favourite word is ‘Obviously’. And she scoffs at the notion that sleep is a good thing. Your bad influence.”

Sherlock looks at John smiling at him, and he knows that John is joking, lightly teasing, taking the piss. He looks down at his hands. “I don’t want her to be like me.”

John nudges Sherlock’s thigh with his elbow. Sherlock looks up, meeting John’s eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with being like you,” John says.

“I’m a sociopath,” Sherlock points out, and doesn’t add, _And I don’t know what I want, and I don’t know what you want, and after nine years, I’m still scared to find out, just in case it isn’t me and I have to watch you walk away again._

John rolls his eyes, and the effect is somewhat marred by a yawn he tries to hide behind his hand. “You’re not a sociopath,” John says, “For the record.”

“You’re not a psychologist,” Sherlock retorts, and the familiarity of the argument settles over him like a warm blanket.

“Okay, Mr Sociopath, who brings me water and cleans up my vomit, who tucks in my daughter, and does Mrs Hudson’s shopping when you think she isn’t looking, do you know how I know you’re not a sociopath?” John’s tone is both long-suffering and fond, and he too seems to be enjoying the old argument.

“How?” 

“On day one of our acquaintance, you cured my limp. I was a total stranger, and you cured my limp.” John makes a sort of ‘there you have it’ gesture. 

“That proves exactly nothing,” Sherlock scoffs. “I didn’t do it because I felt sorry for you or anything, I did it to prove I was right.”

“You already knew you were right, and you already knew that I knew you were right. I’m a doctor, and I know where I was shot,” John says, in his ‘I’m not completely stupid, thank you’ tone. The tone he uses when he calls Sherlock on his bollocks. “Why did you really do it?”

Sherlock presses his lips together and looks down at his hands again. _Out with it. Come on._ “I did it because I wanted you to like me,” he confesses quietly. It’s the truth, too, even though it only occurred to him much later why he was showing off that much that first evening. 

“In other words, you did it for the same reason people are usually nice to each other,” John says, and there’s a note of fond amusement in his voice that makes Sherlock feel ever so slightly stupid. John is the only person who can make Sherlock feel stupid and who Sherlock doesn’t resent for it. 

John sits up on his elbows and motions Sherlock closer. Sherlock leans down, and John mutters conspiratorially. “I’ll tell you a secret: I wanted you to like me too.”

Sherlock has nothing to say to that. At least nothing he can find the courage to say out loud, in the middle of the night, to a John Watson whose eyes are glazed with fever. 

“I thought Mary was pretty funny,” Sherlock finally says, and he discovers to his surprise that it feels good to talk about her, and not resent her.

“True,” John concedes, still smiling fondly at Sherlock. “And she was a tremendous baker. Excellent biscuits, almost as good as Mrs Hudson’s.”

“She used to eat her salad first, it was always gone when her entree arrived.”

“Rosie does that with ketchup,” John says, closing his eyes again. “She did this thing when she was reading or watching telly, she used to curl her hair around her finger.” John’s voice sounds faint, and Sherlock knows he’s about to drift off to sleep. “And she hummed. Constantly. It was pretty annoying sometimes.”

“That’s enough to go on for now,” Sherlock says, and John nods, eyes closed. 

John turns towards Sherlock, curls his body around the space where Sherlock is sitting. His knees are touching Sherlock’s thigh. He doesn’t move them, and Sherlock doesn’t stir. “Thank you,” he mutters.

Sherlock just snorts. 

John smiles, but doesn’t open his eyes. Sherlock stays until he falls asleep. And then he stays a bit longer.


	16. Courage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, guys. It took me 18 + months to write this fic, and I want to thank by beta [hotshoe_again](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotshoe_again/pseuds/hotshoe_again%22), you made my story better!

“Ouch!”

“Will you hold still!”

“You’re supposed to patch me up, not wound me further.”

“Then hold bloody still while I clean this up and determine whether you need any bloody stitches.”

Sherlock grumbles something under his breath about Hippocratic oaths and doing no harm, but he unbuttons his shirt and lets John take a look at the gash in his shoulder. 

John shakes his head and swallows down a dozen insults to Sherlock’s intelligence, his survival instinct and his general lack of anything remotely resembling common sense. What he would really like to do is yell a million variations of the word _idiot_ at him, but Sherlock is currently bleeding, and the yelling will keep; the wound will not.

They’re sitting at the kitchen table, John’s medical kit open between them, and John is systematically cleaning the blood from Sherlock’s too-pale skin. Sherlock is watching him with a mixture of wariness and boredom, and John knows that Sherlock can probably guess all the words he isn’t saying, but right now that isn’t very difficult, because John would be the first to admit that he’s thinking very loudly. 

“It’s not too bad,” John muses as he cleans the wound, a little less gently than he normally would. “Doesn’t need stitches.”

“See? I told you. Nothing to fret about.”

John reaches for the antibiotic ointment and starts applying it with more force than is at all necessary. He gestures at the wound. “First of all, you idiot, I’m not _fretting_. Secondly, he had a fucking knife, and you _knew_ he had a fucking knife, and you couldn’t wait five fucking seconds? Five fucking seconds for us to catch up with you?” He’s yelling by the last words, and as he tapes the gauze over the wound, Sherlock winces. 

“He was a pathetic knife fighter, John, you would have been disappointed,” Sherlock points out, and from his tone John knows that Sherlock is trying to get John to see the funny side of this. 

There’s nothing fucking funny about this. “Five inches, Sherlock. Five bloody inches. You know what’s five inches from where he cut you? Your bloody carotid artery.” John rubs a hand over his face and fights against the overwhelming urge to do something drastic, like punch Sherlock in the face, or drink an entire bottle of Scotch, or go out into the London night and look for somebody to have a fistfight with. 

Five inches. Five fucking inches.

“John.” Gently, carefully. 

John can’t. Can’t do any of this right now.

“I’ll go check on Rosie,” he mutters.

He makes it three steps up the stairs, then all the fight leaves him and he sits down, surrendering to the panic. 

Five inches.

Air. He needs air. He buries his face in his hands and tries very, very, very hard to breathe. 

Gentle hands on shoulders. “John. Breathe.”

John tries to control the shaking. Breathe. In. Out. 

Five inches. 

He can hear it in his dreams, sometimes. The alarm. The flatline. He can almost feel the shocks. He sees it almost as often as he sees Sherlock jump. 

“John. Breathe. I’m fine. I’m fine. Are you listening to me?”

There was so much blood that night. On John’s hands, soaked into his jeans. He threw those jeans out. Couldn’t look at them anymore. 

“John. Look at me.”

Five to fifteen seconds. An adult male will bleed out in five to fifteen seconds if the carotid artery is severed. John has witnessed firsthand how long five to fifteen seconds can be if you have to watch somebody bleed out under your hands and you know you can do nothing, nothing…

Sherlock bats his hands away, grips his face with both hands and presses their mouths together.

Everything stops. 

Sherlock is kissing him.

_Sherlock is kissing him._

Sherlock stops kissing him. 

John blinks, once. Takes a breath. And another. And another.

Sherlock is still very close, hands on John’s shoulders. 

“What…” John has trouble finding his voice. He clears his throat, tries again. “What…” Apparently, his brain can’t deliver any more than that. In fact, his brain is currently offline. 

“I shocked your brain out of a panic attack,” Sherlock says, quietly, still very close. He’s looking at John, wary, cautious, nervous. Waiting for John to react.

“By kissing me,” John adds, and it’s not really a question, and it’s very much a question.

Sherlock nods. He takes his hands off John’s shoulders and kneels back on the bottom stair. 

John has no words. His brain is still caught between the edge of a panic attack and utter bewilderment that Sherlock kissed him. 

Silence descends. Sherlock watches him. John watches back. The only light in the stairwell comes from the open sitting room door. 

Mrs Hudson’s grandfather clock strikes midnight. Rosie mutters something in her sleep upstairs. 

John smiles and catches Sherlock doing the same. 

“I love it when she does that,” John says, voice barely above a whisper.

Sherlock nods, looking down at his hands resting on his knees. “Me too.” He lifts his gaze and gives John one of those razor-focused _I want to read your mind_ looks that always make John feel incredibly special. It’s not an easy thing, capturing Sherlock Holmes’ full attention.

“You’re not angry with me.”

John sighs. “I’m so angry with you I could spit.”

Sherlock drops his gaze and contemplates his hands again. “Oh.”

“Do you have an actual death wish? Do you want me to have to bury you again?” John demands.

Sherlock shakes his head, still not looking at John. “I don’t… I don’t want to die. Not anymore. And the last thing I want is to hurt you again.”

“Then stop to think before you act. Just for one bloody second,” John says. “Please.”

Sherlock’s lips quirk up into a half-smile. “I promised you I wouldn’t lie to you again, remember?”

John exhales deeply, and closes his eyes for a second. “I know. And I appreciate it, I really do.”

Suddenly he wants nothing more than to collapse into Sherlock.

And maybe it’s because he’s so very tired, or maybe it’s because life is so bloody short, but for once in his life, he lets gravity take him, and he tilts forward until his head is resting on Sherlock’s uninjured shoulder. Slowly, tentatively, Sherlock’s arms go around him, and then they’re pressed together, Sherlock kneeling between John’s thighs, holding on tightly and just breathing. And John makes a decision, there and then. No more hiding, no more tiptoeing around this thing that is between them, that neither of them ever had the courage to call love. Well, John is a soldier after all. Once more into the breach, and all that. 

John moves back and looks at Sherlock, who’s watching him with an unreadable expression, and John hates the wariness in Sherlock’s entire demeanour, the full expectation of rejection. “You kissed me,” he says, quietly, gently.

“Obviously,” Sherlock says, trying for humor, but John hears the uncertainty in his voice.

“Was that just to shock me out of a panic attack?”

Sherlock looks down, and the hesitation before he speaks is highly unusual for him. “Well. Yes. Right now.”

John can’t help a small smile, because trust Sherlock to play semantics during a moment like this. “All right. Let me rephrase. Would you like to try that again, without the hyperventilation?”

Sherlock looks up at him, eyes wide with surprise. He doesn’t answer, and he looks a bit like a deer in headlights, caught out and uncertain which way to run. For a long moment, he hesitates. “Yes,” he finally says. “Yes.”

John catches the end of that second yes as he leans in and kisses Sherlock. Gently. Cautiously. Sherlock is still kneeling between his thighs, and John wraps one arm around his waist and gently threads the fingers of his other hand into Sherlock’s hair and pulls him even closer. Sherlock huffs a surprised breath against John’s lips, then kisses back, carefully, deliberately, hands fisting in the fabric of John’s jumper. John can feel the tremor that runs through Sherlock’s body when John licks against his lips, and John moves closer, drags Sherlock in, wants more contact, more warmth, more of this heady, quiet intimacy. Sherlock seems to be on board with this because he grabs at John’s clothes and holds John still.

The kiss deepens, opens, and John feels it down to his toes, this thing between them finally out in the open, and his entire body tingles with a lovely, low-humming arousal that’s not urgent but not sedate either. 

Sherlock draws back and looks at John, and there’s a lovely flush on his cheekbones and along the sides of his neck that John wants to trace down his body. He swallows, and John realises that he’s nervous. 

“What is it?” he asks. “Too much?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “No. Only…” He moves back just a little. “I’m not good at any of this.”

“Any of what?” John asks, keeping his tone carefully neutral and academic. “Sex?”

Sherlock actually blushes a bit, which John finds utterly charming. “Not sex...” He gestures between the two of them. “But all the rest of it, too. Remembering birthdays, and getting dinner, and asking how your day was, and all the rest of the tedious nonsense people seem to value so highly.” He looks down at where his hands are still fisted in John’s jumper. “Being honest,” he adds quietly. “Not hurting you all the time.”

John nudges Sherlock’s head up with his hand in his hair. “Do you honestly think that after nine years, I don’t know exactly what I’m getting into with you? And as for lying and hurting, I’ve done plenty of that to you too. And yet you’re still here. And I’m still here. You know why? Because we fit, you and me. We always have.”

Sherlock swallows, and John can feel Sherlock’s heart beating against the hand still fisted in his clothes. “You make me completely irrational, and it scares me. Always has.”

John is quiet for a moment, too overwhelmed to speak. After nine years, he’s fluent enough in Sherlock’s version of English to hear the unsaid _I love you_ in this statement. He hears Mycroft’s voice in his memory, on a night long ago. _You are the one person my brother cannot be rational about._ And he realises this is something he’s known all along. “I’m irrational about you too,” John says, and he doesn’t mind that his voice isn’t entirely steady. “So. What are we going to do about our shared irrationality?”

Sherlock smiles at him, hesitant but real. “I’ve got a few ideas,” he says and kisses John again.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Conversations After Midnight [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29710860) by [johnlockypodfics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnlockypodfics/pseuds/johnlockypodfics)




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